


Of Hats and Wounds

by Daukan



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: A lot of dialogue this is Romance baby, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Characters will be added as it goes - Freeform, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Injury, Slow Burn, Trauma, but it is kinda?, i don't know how to call this AU so help is appreciated, maybe not that slow, no beta we die like the lord intended, this is supposed to be short too, what if clem arrives a few months too late and the kids are already taken AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2020-07-31 09:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20112733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daukan/pseuds/Daukan
Summary: With the her leg wounded and in the middle of the woods, Clementine finds herself in a delicate situation between her tired 5 year-old, a boy with questionable philosophies, and a girl who just lost everything.Or, what if Clem and AJ arrived a couple of months too late and the kids are already taken by the Delta, except for One.





	1. Chapter 1

The first thing in her ears was a deep rhythm. Fast. Like taps on a window, or water drops falling from a leak on the roof after a storm; or how her fingers used to drum against the steering wheel, mind focused on the road and sometimes taking a look or two through the rearview to check on AJ sleeping on the backseat. It took a couple of seconds for her to realize that the sound was her own heartbeat.

The second thing she heard came along her vision. A loud, piercing ringing inside her ear so sharp she had to suppress a scream. When her eyes opened from being shut with such force, she struggled to focus. Then came the dots. Black. White. At the realization that her surroundings didn’t stop going in circles, and at the point when it was surprising that blood wasn’t sliding down her ears, she assumed her brain was really determined on giving her the worst headache of her life.

The third sound came along pain. An acute spark of pain over her leg as the groans of the dead seeped through her ears. Her body felt warm. Dangerously warm, and not burning by the patches of snow. When she tried to get away from the fire at her feet, the sudden movement made everything blurry, and in the weak attempt to get help with a dried throat, the only think that came out of her mouth was “AJ”. She just needed to find him, hear him, just a sign that he was okay.

As her head moved ignoring the pain in order to find the boy, trying to orientate herself, something grabbed her from under her arms. The pain of her body, her leg, now forgotten by the panic and her efforts to get out. Kicking, punching, but it was of no use. Too tired. Too beaten. She swore she had screamed for AJ at the top of her lungs until her throat started to rip apart, but it was only a faint whisper. A faint, desperate whisper as her body drained from all strength and silence reigned once more.

* * *

She woke up to the crackling of a bonfire and trees. Her eyes wandered over the night sky, the branches framing the darkness and stars like the most peaceful picture. The cold seeped through and flew inside her bones. Her thoughts slowly started to reappear. _What happened. Where am I. Am I dead…_

_AJ._

Her body jolted straight up, and soon, her back suffered the consequences of laying on the floor. _AJ, AJ, AJ _repeated like a mantra, blinding her half-conscious mind from watching him turn to her. There weren’t walkers surrounding them. No groans. No car. And the only fire was confined to a spot on the ground. She tried to stand in the middle of her confusion, but a sharp pain flared through her leg, causing a scream to find its way out of her mouth, tearing the walls of her dried throat in the process.

“Clem!” The boy launched over her, arms wrapping around her neck and almost knocking her over. She allowed herself to enjoy the feeling.

“AJ, what is—" The surroundings engulfed her, mouth agape at the confusion. She remembered the horde, the car, the tree, and AJ getting out just as the engine gave up and flames took over; not the calmness, not the deep forest, not the gentle fire.

And certainly not the man sitting seven feet away from her.

In an irrational set of mind, her hand reached to grip her knife, but it wasn’t on its place. The amalgam of panic, confusion and pain threatening to put her back into unconsciousness. Incapable of forming coherent sentences, lone concepts floated around her head.

Totaled car. Forest. AJ. Pain. Man. Unsafe. Pain. AJ. Quiet. Pain. Calm. Fire. Pain. Silence. Pain. Pain. Pain.

Her leg.

It hurt. Bad. But the left leg of her pants was rolled up to the knee, with a belt as a tourniquet and a bloodied bandage wrapped carefully around her calf. And her boot was gone, leaving her foot to freeze, since her socks were thin and more hole than fabric. She didn’t remember carrying a lot of bandages with them.

“Clementine.” She realized that was the third time AJ called her name, holding her by the shoulders. “You’re okay.”

“Are you?” Searching him for injuries, she only found scrapes on his arms and face. Nothing else.

“I hit my head, but I’m fine. You passed out though, and your leg got hurt real bad,” he said, then reaching for something by her backpack, resting against the log. AJ handed the missing knife and then placed her hat on top of her head. He smiled. “Where it belongs.”

“Thank you, goofball.”

She wanted to smile back at him, but her gaze fixed in the person behind him.

She opened her mouth to ask, but AJ was faster. “James helped us out.”

“James?”

Her body tensed. Now that she was paying attention, she could see the boy clearer. He was pretty much around her own age, sitting against a log in front of the fire. His eyes were traveling without specific aim around both of them, nervous, and a mass of dark hair framed his strong features. He looked tall and heavy built, but that was maybe his thick vest. She had never seen him before. But she also hadn’t seen anyone that wasn’t AJ in a while.

“Yeah,” he spoke. His voice not too high, not too low; almost comforting. “Clementine, right? You were gone for a while.”

He handed her a bottle of water and she reluctantly took it. She hadn’t realized how dry her throat was until the water brought that lightly painful relief, the sensation almost enough to make her drop her defenses; but Clementine didn’t shake her expression. Alert. The boy—James, seemed like the opposite of a menace, but she didn’t know him, and she hadn’t had the best experience with strangers in her life. AJ looked equally conflicted, and the warm spot on her side showed that he hadn’t moved from his position. She didn’t know for how long she was gone, but she patently assumed that she hadn’t really interrupted any type of conversation.

Comprehending that he wasn’t going to get any words back, James started to talk again.

“Your car got wrecked. Straight against a tree. The motor exploded and I found both of you when I went to check for the noise.”

She had lost control of the car when the walkers started to crowd around, she remembered. The place they raided had been empty, and the few seconds in which the engine refused to work were enough to attract a whole horde going towards them. That, along the puddles of mud from consecutive rains and the spots that were starting to frost in the settling winter, made the wheels slip from her control. Then everything had turned black.

She tried to say something, but before her mouth even opened, her left leg tried to accommodate itself out of habit. The intense pain resembled that of a knife cutting a deep long line, not wasting a second more to spread across her whole leg. Every muscle in her body tensed, and the only way she could fulfill the urge to clutch something was squeezing her own wrist. Her scream got caught halfway and came out as just a soft whine.

She held up her hand to reassure AJ—who looked dangerously worried—, and when the pain reached a bearable point, she let out a ragged exhale. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re really not,” AJ rebutted without missing a beat.

“How bad is it?”

“Really, _really bad_. Like, stitches kind of bad.”

She looked at James trying to get some confirmation. AJ wasn’t one to exaggerate things, but he was still a kid clouded by concern.

James nodded. “It is.” Clementine let out a tired sigh before he continued. “A detached part of the car may have sliced your leg when you got ejected, something strong enough to cut the side of your boot. I have what we need to stitch you up on another place, but I’m… not in the best condition to carry you right now.” Just then, she noticed the blood by the boy’s bicep. It was dried on his clothing, not fresh, but still a wound.

“Why are you helping us?” she asked, almost too fast. Something inside her told her to trust this guy, and although her gut was right most of the time, it was also responsible of her worst mistakes. She had to get the question out of the way.

He was clearly expecting that, but the answered still lingered on his tongue. “I’ve seen enough death, so as long as I can help, I’ll do it.”

She’s met so many different people in her life that it almost seemed like a trick answer.

She calculated her chances, but the answer seemed almost obvious. They could either keep going on their trip leading to nowhere, without a car and a wound that was an open door to infections, or they could go with the boy and hope he was telling the truth. She was great at reading people, and, well, if now she ended up being wrong, AJ was a pretty good shot with his gun.

“I guess I can walk if I try.”

James nodded and stood up easily while Clementine took off the belt on her leg, passing it to the boy. The only thing that he was visibly carrying was a makeshift backpack for twigs made with sticks and rope that she had failed to notice before, and her slashed boot; but other than that, she couldn’t even figure out where his weapon was—and being unknowing felt, at the lack of words, unnerving. He extended his hand to help her, and she reluctantly accepted. He wore weird, almost leather-like fingerless gloves.

“I can help you if you lean on me,” AJ said, seeing her struggle to stand. He was still pretty short, but she was always grateful for his help. “That way, James can stay more alert in case of any walkers coming by.” She did so, and tried her best to press the less weight she could onto him.

The sun had set a while ago. When they were on the road and found a house to scavenge, the skies were painted in deep warm colors. Clementine had been out for no longer than an hour, so the red was quickly replaced by the night. Limping her way to a place that served as a last resort for an injured leg, with AJ’s support, wasn’t how she expected her night to go. It wasn’t how she expected any night to go. But she didn’t exactly have a plan that the events could have disrupted, as much as she told AJ otherwise; there were just a couple of words that served as a scheme for their day by day, and those were Move and Survive. Though it seemed like she wasn’t the best at the last one.

Clementine wondered where her energy to move was coming from. The last thing they had to eat was a bag of chips, and without even looking she had tossed it to AJ, refusing every single one of his offerings. Her stomach had been consuming itself for days now; her last movements powered maybe by the bag of nuts they found inside a mostly empty bag, or that squirrel that AJ (shockingly) managed to catch mid jump that one time. The effects of starvation were starting to get to her. They weren’t pleasant.

“So… where are you taking us, exactly?” Clementine asked.

“It’s a boarding school, ten minutes from here,” he answered. “Possibly fifteen with your leg.”

“A boarding school? In the middle of the woods?”

“Yeah. Had the same reaction.”

“So you’re new to this place?” Clementine arched an eyebrow. He seemed familiar with the woods, so it was a surprise.

“No. I’ve been here for a while.” His expression downed slightly. “I met someone there a couple of weeks ago though. She has what we need to fix your leg.”

“You said you were alone,” AJ frowned.

“When I found you I was.”

The three of them turned their heads at the sound of groaning from the side. A single walker appeared hobbling and Clementine pulled out the knife, alert. A single walker always meant a group of them was getting closer from behind. She couldn’t kick the walker’s knee anymore, so now her movements were risky. However, before she could do anything, James blocked her way with his arm.

“Quiet.” The creature hadn’t noticed them yet, and James took the opportunity to take a rock from his back pocket. “This way, no one gets hurt.”

He threw the rock and the walker followed its echo deeper into the woods. James loosened up and continued his walk normally, leaving Clem to wonder why he didn’t let her take the walker out, or took her weapon, or took his _own_ weapon; but as she spotted the handle of a knife and its shaft tied to his pants, she came to the concerning realization that he _didn’t_ want to kill them. She wasn’t going to pry for answers, but AJ had other ideas.

“You scared it away.”

“I didn’t _scare_ him. I distracted him. Sound draws their attention.”

“I know that,” he huffed. “Why didn’t you just kill it? It will come back anyway.”

“I—” He cut himself off, pursing his lips. “We have to hurry up in order to avoid them.”

Walkers weren’t that much of a problem in woods like this one. According to the last map she saw, the nearest city was close to a hundred miles away, and the road they had been crossing was just countryside anywhere they looked at. Since the start, thousands of survivors had had her same idea of running from high concentrations of people, but it was undeniably easier to find yourself alone in the woods than in any city.

“Not that is really important, but as a heads-up,” James started to talk with hesitancy dominating every word. “She—the girl I was talking about, she may not be very fond of new people at first.” He scratched his neck as he looked around to spot more walkers. There were none.

Clementine confined herself to a nod, hoping that he would give them more information. He did not.

The school was, as James said, close to fifteen minutes of distance from the site they were on. She was met by a tall brick wall and a metallic gate, with “ERICSON ACADEMY” written in fancy letters on top. The walls were surrounded by debris and covered in wild vegetation, completely expected with all the years gone by; but what she did not expect, however, was to see a dead body right next to the wall and facing away from them. Her eyes wandered through the figure for a second, a white cloth over the face blocking her of getting any sight, but she quickly looked away. Thought she’d be used to it by now.

James opened the gate without any difficulty. In fact, it seemed that it wasn’t secured at all. The main building, as she assumed, stood in omnipresence at the center across the big courtyard; and apart from the broken windows and walls, it was in a prestigious state. She could tell AJ was curious, but he kept quiet nonetheless. The night didn’t let her see much more than tables spread across the whole area and barrels destined to be bonfires. But it was empty. Deserted. The silence was tense, almost uncomfortable, not what she expected to find in a mostly unscathed giant boarding school.

“Violet,” James called in his quiet voice and waited for a few seconds, as if someone from anywhere in the school could hear his tone. With no response, he tried again: “Violet!” He looked around expectantly, clearly uncomfortable for having to use a slightly (_really slightly_) stronger tone.

Clementine would have been more surprised if someone actually showed up.

He closed the gate behind them and waited a couple of seconds before signaling them to follow to the building on the right, not as tall as the main one —the dorms. Clem saw a dark stain of blood on the floor as they left the entrance, but didn’t think much of it. The sound of silence became even more uneasy at the interior, where the wind couldn’t get through and they were left with their steps, breathing and heartbeats. Apart from the lack of sound, what drew the most attention were the walls completely covered in graffiti. They weren’t really something someone would call poetic actions, since most of what she could read involved somewhat the words “shit, fuck, ass” and nothing more, but she applauded the ones that got a little bit creative. Couldn’t blame them though.

There were multiple doors in line to the right and no one there. Some windows were broken and dirty, but the mess didn’t go any further. James stopped at the second door to knock lightly. Once. Twice. The floor cracked and she turned around, but it didn’t take her long to notice that it was just her own weight against the floor.

“She would have come outside already if she was here,” James said, backing away. “I’ll check the other building.” Clem gave a step forward, pressing her leg harder than she intended to, forcing a grunt to leave her lips. James interrupted her before anything. “Stay here. It won’t take long.” He hurried towards the exit, and they were left alone.

She exhaled and leaned on the wall, and leaving her leg half-hanging, she felt as if ants were climbing her skin. Having nothing to get distracted with directed her mind exclusively towards the preeminent, and very annoying, pain. She tried to think of something else.

“Do you think they have some place where you could sit?” said AJ.

“I don’t really see any chairs, kiddo.” The only furniture was a single shelf, broken and not free of vandalism.

AJ motioned towards the hall with his eyes and then looked back at her. She hesitated, not really comfortable at having to invade someone else’s privacy, but also a little less comfortable with her leg sliced open. At the end, she complied.

They stood at the second door, a door away before a turn on the hallway. At the left, the windows showed some kind of indoor patio, with the rest of the dorm building following its contour. It looked empty and abandoned, with some plants taking over. She turned with the hallway, finding three other doors before seeing broken chairs and tables used as a barricade to the path towards the other side. The first was a metal door that, unsurprisingly, didn’t open. The handle didn’t move at all, so it was jammed, not locked. She knocked the next one, in expectancy for someone to finally come out—which, of course, didn’t happen. Before she could open it, however, AJ had already entered the room prior to the metal door, breathing out a “wow” that she could not ignore.

“The door,” he indicated, and Clementine was confused before remembering her own rule: ‘_Every time you enter a room, look for a way to escape’._

They found a bunk bed with unmade covers, but folded clothes on top of a drawer. There were color pens and brushes, along with sheets of paper without organization scattered on top of the desk, but AJ was watching the multiple drawings hanging on the walls. For just a second she thought that she was in front of James room, but noticing that the clothes were way too small and the room as a whole looked childlike, the conclusion went out the window. Some drawings looked old, some new. They were clearly made by a kid, with stiff figures that still had distinguishable features; some animals, some people, some suns with sunglasses drawn at the edges. AJ had never been with another kid his age, and the mere thought of him finally meeting another put a smile on her face.

“Must’ve been an artist living here,” she said when AJ didn’t turn away from the drawings.

“What’s an artist?”

“Someone who likes making art, like drawing and paintings. Using colors.”

He contemplated for a second. “I’d like to be an artist one day.” He turned around, and ran to the corner of the room. “Look! There’s toys!”

“They are not yours to take, AJ,” Clementine warned.

“But there’s nobody here.”

“Not right now, but what if they come back and notice that someone moved their things out of place?”

“That’s a dumb thing to get mad about.”

“People are allowed to get mad about things, doesn’t matter if you think they shouldn’t.”

“But I’m not gonna move them! I just want to—”

“AJ,” Clementine reproached. He was crossing her patience, yes, but watching him getting sad over toys made her feel guilty. She wished she could give more space on her backpack to carry toys they found on the way, but it already weighed heavy enough.

He crossed his arms and pouted lightly, and while she felt bad, she couldn’t take him seriously like that. He looked at the desk. “They don’t have a chair.”

Clementine did the same as she exited the door. “Guess not.”

AJ opened the last door, turning to the left with the hall and paying no mind to linear order (or privacy for that matter). Just like the last one, it seemed owned, with a similar bed and furniture, but tidier and more organized. The window right in front of them was partially covered with fur, two pieces from small animals that she assumed were set to dry; and the end of the bed was covered by a bigger and reddish kind of fur, like one from a fox. The desk was exactly the same as the one of the other room. Clementine saw part of her reflection on a broken mirror against the drawer, so sick and tired that if the wound didn’t give her hypothermia she would maybe believe in God. From there, she could see a yellowish note on the desk, with thick black letters reading:

OMAR, MAKE INVENTORY LIST. BY NOON.

Just when she thought that this was just James’ room.

There were other people living in the school, but _where were they?_

AJ took a step inside the room before she could stop it, so she stayed at the door frame. He carefully looked around the confines of the room, walking towards the bookshelf to grab a book but stopping mid-stretch. He looked at her with smart eyes.

“They are not mine.”

“There you go.” She smiled.

This room did luckily have a chair next to the desk, yet AJ talked before she could ask him for help.

“Where are these people?” he said, dragging his finger over the wooden drawer. It darkened with dust.

“Maybe they’re in another building.”

“But the gate was unlocked.”

She stayed silent.

The quietness was so enveloping that when she heard gentle footsteps from behind, her senses shot straight up. Her hand went immediately to take the knife and turn around to face whoever it was, expecting at least to see James turning the hallway. But it didn’t make sense. If he were to step in, he wouldn’t do it with such caution, as in wait for the right moment. They stopped coming, and when that happened, she turned around.

Nothing.

Her shoulders dropped. Nothing. What she should have expected. They weren’t footsteps, but more likely taps from a bird on the roof, or the branch of a tree testing its strength. James wasn’t over yet, still searching for the girl. Her leg hadn’t stopped aching. Nothing changed, so she turned back at AJ.

And then she heard the unmistakable sound of a bow being tensed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was like "pl e a se don't put it on AO3 yet" but you know what??? i'm dumbass first human second. Here's This.  
This fandom is dead but i experienced a Thought inspired by the ask where Kent Mudle said that Vi would have probably "rebelled" if the Delta showed up, which is just a nice way of saying she would have mcfucking died but i can't physically do that  
I STILL don't know shit about english so yeah, sorry??? i appreciate grammar corrections and advice in general v much
> 
> ALSO i know this sounds like a james/clem fic at first but BEAR W/ ME it is Not. i'm not into that and i respect canon queer sexualities. he's just here bc I like him and uhhh reasons that will explain themselves later. i'm just lazy.  
I've had the word document since like may, SO, updates will come whenever my two brain cells make a sentence. thanks for reading love u


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kinda trigger warning for graphic description of an injury? i don't know if it's that graphic? It's like on the game, i guess. if those kind of things fuck you up then be careful dude

She slowly put her hands in the air, completely frozen. The sudden tension forcing both of her feet against the floor, a flare of pain rushing through her leg at the mere touch, but she had to constrain her cry inside. She turned around with her arms still up and was met by a slender, dark silhouette aiming a bow at her, and following, another figure half her size; its growl creating a emptiness in her chest, and paws against the floor echoing inside her head as if time had stopped its course. A dog. A giant dog over that. She could swear that a faint line of pain traced the scar on her left arm. AJ must have noticed the new sound and her own lack thereof, because before she could do anything to prevent it, he was fast out of the room and the bow was now directed at him. He stiffened just like her. Not caring about the person in front of them, Clementine’s arm shot straight in front of AJ to keep him out of the picture.

Now that the figure’s sight was directed to AJ, Clem saw that their arms hesitated, lowered just a couple of inches before going back up. The dog growled, but was shushed quickly.

“What are you doing in here?” The voice wasn’t low neither high-pitched, but it was clearly feminine.

Clementine studied their situation. She could try to get AJ’s gun to aim back, but by the time she gets her hand on it, the arrow would have already been fired; and at the distance they were at it was a point-blank range. She couldn’t do anything but keep her hands in the air.

“We’re looking for help,” she said.

“Clem’s hurt. Are you Violet?” AJ jumped into the conversation. “James said that you had what he needed to help.” Clementine _really_ didn’t want him to get involved into potentially dangerous situations for as long as she could help it, but it was almost impossible.

“James?” The person seemed to consider that for a while, but she shook her head. “Well, where’s he now?”

The hallway was dark and the girl was facing them in front of the only light source, so Clementine couldn’t get a good look of her; but her stance, the way her fingers held the bow, the position of her shoulders and her voice, _everything_ pointed out her extremely wary state. She couldn’t blame her. They were in the middle of the woods, and the school seemed mostly empty, so she assumed that neither Violet nor James were used to new people.

“He didn’t find you in your room, so he told us to wait for him while he searched for you in other building,” Clementine replied. “I swear we’re not going to do anything. I’m not in… the best shape to do anything else anyway.” She thought she saw the dog moving forward, so she kept a steady eye at it.

She noticed the girl looking at her leg, the blood that stained her pants and James’ binding. She just realized that she had one too, a square of gauze over her right eye, covering completely from her eye to the side of her head, being held in place by bandages wrapped around. Her gaze shifted to the floor, seemingly in contemplation, and when Clementine thought that she was finally going to lower the bow, the moon reflected on her left eye, telling her that her attention was centered on them again. She swore she could almost identify its color.

“How do I know you’re not from the Delta?”

“The _what—_?”

“Violet. Put the bow down.”

Violet’s head jerked around as James appeared from the corner. Sighing, she pointed the bow to the floor, but kept it stretched. All the tension left her body in an instant, and her quite straight posture quickly changed, her spine hunching over. There was still no light, but under the moonshine she could see the incredibly thin figure of the girl in front of her. Her hair was cut a little over her shoulders, blonde and a mess. Her skin was pale as in almost unhealthy; and she seemed to be the same height as Clementine.

And young. Close to her own age.

When was the last time she talked to someone that wasn’t an adult?

“I get you to bring some wood and you come back with two people,” she said, looking at him as if to look for a confirmation. “Let me tell you, not really what I expected after I told you I was not used to being alone.”

James huffed and walked closer to them, but Clementine was paying attention at the dog. It was big, a solid wall of pure muscle under short brown fur. It seemed to appease at the blonde girl’s change of demeanor, now looking up to her; and although James appearance didn’t give the dog an immediate peace effect, it didn’t alert it either. But even then, on Clementine’s eyes, it was just a ridiculously strong animal, ready to take her down, with a broad head serving the only purpose of storing its sharp fangs _waiting_ to crash her head in. She demonized the creature as if the devil was standing before her, or as if it was the personification of a child’s scary story.

She watched as James pointed to the girl’s bow, asking her something with his eyes. Violet only furrowed her eyebrows and moved the weapon slightly away from him. Refusing.

“Just—” she tried to say something, but got caught with her own breath. “How can you tell they’re not from the Delta?”

“Delta wouldn’t send a girl with a kid like him alone.”

They stared each other. They looked nothing alike. With James’ dark hair and asian features contrasting Violet’s incredibly pale hair under the moonlight and obvious caucasian traits, the “siblings” possibility that she made up in her mind wasn’t in consideration anymore. In a couple of seconds, she gave in, hanging the bow to her back and storing the arrow back into its place.

“What are your names?” she asked, now looking at them and getting closer.

When James arrived, she felt safe enough to put down her hands, so she was now holding onto the drawer beside her trying to keep her leg from touching the ground.

“I’m Clementine and this is AJ.”

“What happened, then?”

Clementine grimaced as her muscle sent a sudden shot of energy across her leg. “Got into a car crash.”

“A _car?_”

“Clem slashed her leg open and James told us that you have what he needs to fix it,” AJ stepped in. “Please.”

Violet turned to James for a second with an indecipherable look before shaking her head.

“Get them into that room, I’ll fetch what we have.” She stormed across the hall and disappeared at the door, the dog losing its interest for them, following close behind.

James walked to the room that Violet had pointed to, a door away. She wanted to say something about the recent encounter, maybe ask, know _more_, but when she made as if to walk to the room, the wave of pain of her left leg making contact with the floor kept her mouth shut.

Inside the room, James made her lay on a bunk bed. There were two, one against both parallel walls. The mattress was hard, worn out, and if she closed her eyes and concentrated on her senses she would feel every expired spring, but none of that mattered when her head couldn’t recall the last time she had slept in a bed in the past few months. So when her head first hit the pillow, it made her leg almost sufferable. The walls were grey, dull and old paint was falling off, though some sports didn’t look like they had just suffered the fate of time, but as if they had been teared. There was the same desk of the rest of the rooms at the feet of the other bed, a drawer in front of the window, and an empty bookshelf. When she looked up, she noticed that the top bunk didn’t have a mattress.

“Don’t fall asleep,” AJ said, wearing a determined look to conceal his worry. She smiled. “You told me it’s better to stay conscious.”

“Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could, kiddo.” She let out a humorless laugh.

James looked at her direction with his hands over her leg, near but not touching it. Before he asked, she gave the go ahead.

The wound opened again without the bandage holding the two sides together. Her whole body tensed. The blood had started to dry, sticking the fabric to the edges of the cut; James gave apologetic eyes before tearing it off. It wasn’t the cleanest cut, but not the messiest either, though it did go from the side of her knee to the verge of her ankle. The hemorrhage had stopped a while ago, but the pain was still present. It was a long trail of vigorous fire, deepening on the center, but not much less painful at the endings.

It didn’t take long before Violet broke into the dorm with a toolbox, a full water bucket and an empty one. She whispered a quiet “holy shit” seeing Clem’s wound, and she almost laughed. She took another chair and carefully rested Clementine’s foot on the edge, placing the empty bucket under the space between the bed and the chair. Without missing a beat, she soaked a rag in the water.

“You’re staying with her?” Violet directed her attention towards AJ.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

James opened the toolbox and took a needle and thread, along with a bottle with little more than half a finger of alcohol left. Clementine grabbed his wrist before he could do anything.

“You have done this before, right?” He was already threading the needle.

His hands weren’t shaking and he looked tranquil more than anything else, and she did notice. It wasn’t really a question to him, but more of an excuse for her to have a little more time to contemplate the thought of _“do I really trust this person to stab me multiple times with a needle?”_

He nodded.

The girl wrung the cloth for the last time as James disinfected the needle. She remembered how she hadn’t thought twice about that those years ago with the fresh dog bite on her arm.

Inches from her wound, Violet hands waited for acknowledgement to start cleaning. “This is going to hurt,” she warned.

Clementine lay her head against the pillow making herself as confortable as anyone could be.

“I know.”

It did.

She stayed awake the whole procedure. Violet cleaned the dried blood of the edges before letting the water run through the open wound, and while it hurt, she silently thanked that they hadn’t used peroxide. She started to bit the collar of her shirt as she felt the fist stab. The thread sliding through the puncture. Then the second. Then again and a gentle knot at the end. Interrupted sutures always took longer than the careless ones that she had done to herself before, and that just translated to more pain. She really wished she had fallen unconscious in that right moment, but kept calm nonetheless.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The needle left her skin an eternity later when her head was already going in circles. A minute, and a new bandage was wrapped around her leg. When she stopped covering her eyes with her arms and searched for the other people in the room, she found them talking by the edge of the door, quietly, as if Clementine was asleep and they didn’t want to wake her up. She wasn’t interested in their discussion anyway. AJ squeezed her hand, and Clementine smiled before squeezing back, tiredness slowly taking control. She tried to keep her eyes open, but even after the pain and having been unconscious a couple of hours ago, the fact that it was four in the morning and that she hadn’t been able to sleep for at least two days was showing presence.

When Violet left the room and James started to mutter something to her, she was out.

* * *

The first thing she did after waking up was kill a moth. Just crushing it against the drawer next to the bed, then clean her palm with the sheets. Sometime, in the middle of the night, a blanket had made its way on top of her body, leaving her leg uncovered. The light from the sun reflected the bars on the window, piercing through; the dilapidated curtains doing absolutely nothing to stop it. She was almost glad that she killed that moth.

AJ was sleeping on the bed next to her, on top of the covers and in what seemed an awkward position. He must’ve tried to stay awake all night, trying to keep guard in a place they didn’t know or trust, but they had been equally tired. In a breath, Clementine contemplated the silence. There weren’t walkers anywhere close, or the constant roar of an engine. Not even people. Just AJ’s soft snores and the casual bird. There was something about that school, something sad, but reassuring at the same time. It was so isolated from the rest of places she had been before, and the protection of the walls made her feel like it was safe enough to stop analyzing every movement at all times. She had passed out without question, for God’s sake. Either this place was safe, or she was getting careless.

Clementine stayed looking at the top bunk until her absorption stopped when AJgave a stir for the last time, before finally opening his eyes. She greeted his sleepy expression with a smile, and a second later, she was reciprocated by the usual joy, but the face of a boy who slept well for the first time in forever. It was depressing to admit the poor conditions they were so accustomed to—no, the poor conditions she put him through.

“Clem!” He jumped from his bed just to get to her, and grabbed her arm. His joyful expression dramatically dropped. “I tried to stay awake, I swear I really did! I had to make sure in case monsters got in but I sat in the bed and I… I fell asleep. I know I shouldn’t have but I still did, and you were passed out so you weren’t a… aware of anything and I _had_ to protect you, but—”

Seeing him say all that like it was just one word, Clementine placed a hand over his cheek and tapped lightly to get him out of panic. His eyes focused onto Clementine’s and she started to take deep, paused breaths that AJ soon started to mimic, puffing his cheeks with air in such a kid way that Clementine couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s okay, AJ. We’re safe in the school, and we’re not alone.”

“You think we’re safe?”

“Well, we’re not in the open anymore, are we?” She raised an eyebrow. AJ contemplated, looking at the floor and letting her arm go. Clementine turned her head as a sudden realization rose. “Where is—?”

AJ grabbed her hat from his bed before she could finish and placed it in her head. She smiled and tilted it gently. AJ did too, before turning to her leg and furrowing his eyebrows.

“Can you walk?”

“I think I could, but I won’t be able to run, or walk fast at all. I wouldn’t risk it for at least four days, and even then, I would limp and the stitches would pop out,” she answered, not really craving to move her leg and try it out for a while.

“How long does it take to heal?”

“It depends. Ideally, you take a couple of days of complete rest, then the stitches have to get removed. After that, you take it slow, not walking for too long at a time. You remember when you sprained your ankle and I told you to not use it too much for a while? It’s something like that. In a month, I should be ready to run again.” Seeing AJ’s face lightened up, she shook her head. “Again, ideally. Forcing my leg to walk would mean that it’ll take longer to heal, but we can’t… afford to take much time. We’ll go as soon as I can stand.”

“We’re not going to stay?” AJ pursed his lips. “You said this place is safe.”

“I could be wrong about that, kiddo. We just arrived. We can’t just take over a place like that, there were other people here first.”

“James was nice. Violet helped us out.”

“That doesn’t necessarily means that they want us to stay longer, and Violet didn’t look too happy to see us.” Clementine’s expression softened when AJ crossed his arms and looked to the floor.

She sighed and stretched her arm over his shoulders, pulling him into a side hug. He slowly leaned his head against her body. Her hand went to rest on his hair.

“I know you’re bored of the road, AJ,” she started, still massaging the head of the pouting boy. “I know you want to find a home—and I want to too, like I’ve told you so many times, but you can never be too sure. I… I can’t just look at a place and know that it isn’t going to be ripped away from us, you know that, you’re smart. But I promise you, and I really do, that someday we’re going to stop going from place to place and we’ll find somewhere to be happy.”

AJ looked at the floor for a couple of seconds more. His arms were still crossed, but his brows no longer knitted.

“I’m tired of running.”

“I know.”

“That’s all we’ve been doing.”

“I know.”

“The car got destroyed.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she said and kissed his hair. “We always do.”

She didn’t know for how long she hugged him in silence, but at some point, low, though not wary footsteps came from the hall, and a second later, a knock on the door. Before she could answer, the door was already opening.

Violet came in with two bowls of food, pushing the door with her shoulder. Clementine straightened her posture just as AJ did the same, her hand giving AJ’s back a last pat before moving away completely.

“Good morning,” Clementine greeted, not really expecting her to be the one that knocked on the door.

“Good _afternoon._” She thought that the girl was irritated until the small curve of a smile showed up. “The sun has been up for hours.”

Violet walked towards the drawer and left the two bowls and spoons on top. There was steam coming from the plates of soup. A hot meal. A hot meal that they hadn’t had in months. Clementine tried to hide the fact that her mouth was already watering by looking at AJ’s direction, only to find him in the same situation.

“I brought you guys food, since you weren’t awake for breakfast.” Halfway through her sentence, AJ grabbed the bowl and tried his best to not spill anything on the floor. “Be careful, boy. It’s hot.”

“My name’s AJ,” he deadpanned.

“Don’t be rude,” Clementine groaned.

“Doesn’t matter, I’m the one that was rude earlier.” Violet leaned against the frame of the bed, hanging her arm on the ladder to the top bunk.

“Yet, you still helped us. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

“Still. This is kind of an apology visit.” Violet left a bottle of water next to her, and if Clementine’s reflexes weren’t so used to the wild, she would have dropped the item that Violet threw in her direction.

She eyed the object in her hands suspiciously, taking some time to recognize what kind of blister pack had been launched into her. She almost gasped.

Analgesics.

The instant relief swarmed her body before she even took one out.

“Don’t go too crazy with those.” Violet warned. “I know it may be tempting to go all out but they’re kinda hard to find nowadays.”

“I won’t. I promise.” She took one off the bubble and engulfed it dry. She remembered the water later.

Clementine grabbed the bowl of food and spoon from the table, careful to not spill anything, and placed it on her legs. The steam and smell of stew got fast to her nose.

There were a couple of things about Violet that she had failed to notice the night before, like the uneven cuts of her hair, maybe an inch or two away from touching her shoulders; or the spots of dirt covering her pale skin, with high cheekbones and mouth usually resting in a frown. But the aspect that caught most her attention was by far the patch covering her right eye. It wasn’t a surprise, since she had actually seen it before, but even when she tried to keep her curiosity at line, the questions remained. The bandage, although clearly changed, showed some spots of dried blood on the thinner edges; and the shirt she wore, along with some parts of her denim vest, had faint stains of red on the collar, both light as if they’d been washed but failed to come completely off.

Violet looked at the floor and shifted her weight to her right leg. “So, how does your leg feel?”

By now, Clementine notices that AJ is no longer paying attention. “Grown-ups” having a conversation was far less important that the bowl of food presented in front of him. To which, fair.

“It’s good. A little bit sore, but there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“You mean, besides the giant gash on the side?”

“Well, that.” Clem offers a smile that Violet diffidently returns.

The food is bland and the meat is a little dry even inside the soup, but that meant absolutely nothing to Clementine. If she couldn’t remember what was even the last thing she ate, then remembering the last _hot_ meal she had was a journey on its own. She’d take a bland rabbit stew to charred squirrel and dirt anytime.

AJ left his plate loudly on top of the drawer and cleaned his mouth with his sleeve, completely oblivious to any kind of manners that once existed. “Where’s James?”

“He’s out,” Violet answered, shifting her weight to her left leg. “He doesn’t always stay in the school, he doesn’t always have a reason either. He’ll be back at the evening though.”

Clementine finished her plate in a pleasant calm, trying not to seem desperate, and watched how, after leaving the plate next to AJ’s, Violet immediately moved to grab them. She always considered herself good at reading people, which came mostly out of necessity since there’s always someone that doesn’t bother to warn you before shooting you in the face. For the whole time she was eating, Violet stood slouched, but tense, resting against the poles of the bunk bed. Her expression remained blank, neither smiling nor frowning, but her eyes had gone through every crevice of the room, hesitant as if it was something wrong. She was uncomfortable, acting like a trapped person, and while Clementine came to the obvious realization that it was their fault, she wondered if there was something else too.

“I’ll leave you for now. I have to take care of some things, but I need to talk to you later and show you things around and all that, as it seems you aren’t leaving anytime soon.” Violet stated, and even not knowing if the passive-aggressiveness was intended, Clementine’s shoulders shrank.

“We don’t mind leaving if you have a problem with us. This is your place and you already gave us—me, medical help,” she hurried to respond.

Violet turned to her and shook her head almost violently. “You are crazy if you think we’ll let you leave with your leg like that.” She looked into Clem’s eyes, making her realize the deep shade of green behind. “Welcome to Ericson’s Boarding School for Troubled Youth and all that introductory shit, then. You’re staying here for a while.”

Clementine’s shoulders relaxed. Having already accepted her faith of having to limp away from walkers and putting AJ at risk, she didn’t realize how comforting those words could have been. She could feel AJ’s lightened eyes and wide smile on her at the moment, and, without really noticing it, she did the same.

“Thank you.”

Violet nodded and exited the room with the dishes in hand.

Clementine shared a look with AJ as the steps faded on the hallway and hugged him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's not much happening here but hey, now we know our girlllll. also eyepatch vi? eyepatch vi  
i actually wanted to publish this chapter sooner (as in,,, hour and not at midnight bc i'm Not posting a new chapter just after one week ever again i'm not that strong) but i put dancing queen on the speakers and lost it all (i WISH i was kidding)  
so yeah good night i did Not edit this so yeah, i don't know what i'm doing


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has a lot dialogue (no shit) to compensate for the first 1000 or so words sjndfjsdnfs but i Do Not Care take this
> 
> i also added the slow burn tag because OF COURSE they don’t fall in love right away. let there be plot. let there be tears. let there be slight gazes held for a little too long. maybe someone touches the other’s hand for a second. i want to SEE the realization. the moment they make their brains work and realize “oh im a Fool”. i wanna see it happen slow.  
but also not that slow you know what I mean.

It took Clementine less than an hour to realize that staying in between four walls, incapable of doing anything, was almost as exasperating as being outside on her own.

From then until the sun was at a three-hands distance to the horizon, she had no control of anything. She didn’t know what was going on outside, she didn’t even have control over her own leg. There was nothing that she could do besides lay down and wait. After so many years waiting for a moment of peace, to have time to sit down and take a breath without having to look through the corner of her eye, the three seconds finally came. She wondered why they felt so empty.

After Violet left the room, AJ had climbed on top of her bed, enthusiastically and leaving her no time to scoot to the wall. She had never really thought about explaining him what a school was, much less a _boarding_ school, both things so simple in the old world but that AJ was so excited about. It was almost sad. The only education she had given to him was to walk, speak, numbers, words (they were working on it still), and from then it was all survival. How to make a fire, how to put out a fire; what to eat, what not to eat, how to drink water safely; take care of wounds, of more serious wounds (her ring finger was always a great example); and the list went on and on. Clementine herself only had formal first grade education, so she relied on things that she had to learn on her own, or, more importantly, that people in her life had taught her. How to be self sufficient, how to hot wire a car, to take the knee first, the importance of family. Lee had showed her how to shoot, so she showed AJ how to kill; and when she passed her fingers through his head, she realized that he may need a haircut soon.

At one point of the day, Violet appeared to leave a pair of metal crutches at the end of the bed, and Clementine smiled almost instantly. Crutches meant movement, and for her, it was the lapse of liberty while being in house arrest.

“We can’t exactly give you a wheelchair,” she had explained, arms crossed. “Not like it would work too great in the dirt and snow either. But anyway, try not use them for too long for now. Your leg still needs bed rest.” She then proceeded to explain the bathroom situation (and thank God, because Clementine really needed to pee), which wasn’t too difficult ignoring the fact that she needed both hands to carry a bucket of water to flush it all down, but she’ll manage. Things were looking up.

And then it was over, and she was left with AJ and silence, again.

Clementine wasn’t really known for following instructions, so it took only a single thought to convince herself to be up in those crutches and out the door, AJ following right behind. She discovered that there were more dorms than she had initially thought, but most of them were barricaded. Those on the right were the girls’ dorms, and to the left were the boys’, rule that, according to Violet, meant absolutely nothing. She had signaled the only available bathroom to the end of the “boys’” corridor. A misfortune, really.

At first, it was hard to keep her body in balance with the crutches. She had never had the necessity of them before (or at least, before the outbreak), but she quickly found herself looking through the rest of the school. She stepped outside for a second, only feeling the cold that sent them inside again. A storm was getting closer. Staying inside the sturdy brick walls, she looked out the windows. Violet was nowhere near, but it made sense; one of the first things she first noticed entering the school was how large it was, with the wall going far before getting lost in the woods, and giant buildings that would take a while to scout around. It was meant for a couple hundred kids, at least before. Now, they couldn’t access half of it. The other side of the school, where she could see smaller buildings and common areas, was completely barricaded. Violet told them that there was a hole on the wall to the side of the classrooms, and left it at that.

They didn’t inspect the other rooms, mostly out of respect and fear to step out of boundaries. Not like Violet and James seemed to be _that_ kind of people, but now that they gave both of them a roof, she didn’t want to risk losing it, not with AJ. It did leave space for questions though. Back on their room, she wondered if Violet had survived just like AJ and her, alone and relying on the scavenge of places, finding James and this isolated and intimidating school just out of luck. But that seemed unlikely. A fortress like this? This place was deemed to be the home of a community, she just didn’t know where it was.

Violet kept her word and went to look for them close to dusk. Clem was sitting on the bed with AJ by her side, almost in the same position that she was in that morning (evening), but now she was helping him practice his reading with an old dirty tourism pamphlet. She just stuck her head in and told them to go outside before disappearing again, so they did.

Two of the barrels were lighted up close to the center, and, scattered around the courtyard, torches gave light to places where it wasn’t needed as much. Violet was in front of the bonfire, looking after two impaled hares hanging over the fire. The patches of snow and ice around the fire melted into puddles, and the cold was bearable enough.

The dog stepped in between them before Clementine could even notice it. She had forgotten about their encounter last night. It started growling and inching closer, and Clementine could only watch the dog’s giant fangs as she jumped back, letting one of the crutches fall and earning a loud bark that sent her pulse rate even higher.

“Hey, HEY!” Violet whistled and the dog completely forgot about them. Turning around, the animal put its head under her extended hand and drowned under the feeling of ear-rubs.

Clementine remained tense, and Violet must have seen it, because she stood up immediately, keeping a hand on the spine of the dog.

“She won’t bite you. She just doesn’t know you,” Violet tried to explain, but Clementine didn’t move her eyes from the animal, still wary. “Are you scared of dogs?”

“Had a bad experience with a dog once,” she managed to get out, struggling to breath. It had been a while since she had frozen up in panic. It had also been a while since the last time she saw a dog.

Violet gave her a gentle smile before holding her hand out. Clementine watched her confused, clearly not knowing what to do.

“She has to know your scent,” she said. “I’m in no position to let her hurt you. I’ve noticed your boy has a gun.”

“I’m AJ.”

“I know, I know. Sorry.”

Clementine looked at AJ. She didn’t know if it was for comfort, for confirmation, or some kind of sympathy. _She_ should be the one that _he_ had to stare at when something was dangerous, not the other way around; but AJ hadn’t had the same experience with dogs. He wasn’t even scared of them, just cautious, like with any other animal. So, in him, she found the needed courage.

She didn’t expect Violet’s hands to be so gentle, guiding her down just by the fingertips, almost as if she was nervous of accidentally crossing the line of her trust. She placed her hand close to the mouth of the animal, and tugged her by the wrist a little bit closer when she noticed that Clementine wasn’t going to move. She didn’t have time to regret when the dog started smelling the back of her hand. Her breath stopped as the myriad of possibilities ran through her mind, being completely convinced that the dog was just waiting to become completely feral, and the strength of her jaw was going to rip her hand off. Rationality was out. All she knew was herself, the dog, and the recollection of someone telling her that these creatures were able to smell fear. When the dog started to lick her fingers, her immediate reaction was to retreat them and take her hand away, but Violet was still supporting her wrist. She didn’t force her hand close to the dog’s mouth, but let her get back only a little before encouraging her to get closer again. In a second, the dog had her tongue out and wagged her stump of a tail.

“She knows you now, see?” Violet said. “Now pet her head. Behind the ears.”

She couldn’t contain a smile when the dog leaned into the touch. Her fur was short, completely brown and, while dirty, it had velvet-like softness. Specially behind her chopped ears. She had forgotten what that was like.

“I know pit bulls can be scary and all, but they’re really more scared of you than you are of them.” Violet looked at AJ, who smiled expectantly. “Wanna try?”

He was faster and significantly less hesitant than her, not needing Violet’s assistance at all. Clementine worried about his face being so close to the animal, but in a blink he was petting the dog like it was the first time he ever did. And maybe it was.

“What’s its name?” he asked.

“She’s Rosie.” Violet pet Rosie’s head for a second before getting up and walking back to the fireplace. “She was the headmaster’s dog before, well, before shit went down.”

“Headmaster?”

“The person who’s in charge of a school,” explained Clementine.

Violet shoot them a side glance, but ignored it.

“James hasn’t arrived yet,” she announced, then proceeded to take the food out of the fire. She looked back to Clementine after Rosie walked back to her side. “Sit on the dinner table with your leg stretched on the bench.” She did so, and debated on asking Violet if she had something strong to stitch up her leather boot. The weather was getting cold already, and it was kind of embarrassing to go around with only a frayed sock.

Violet put both hares on a plate and, with a knife, started to piece them over the table. When she sat down, she immediately grabbed one of the legs. Clementine did the same. Hares never really had a lot of meat on them, or flavor at all, but complaining didn’t even cross her mind.

“So,” she started, lifting her leg over the bench and resting her elbow on her knee, “now that you already know our dog, who are you?”

When she looked at her directly, Clementine noticed for the first time that her eyes—well, the one she could see, was green. Pale and dirty, and she could have easily confused it by gray, but at the end of the day it was still a strangely pretty green.

AJ didn’t seem to catch the hidden meaning of the question, so he furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “We already told you. She’s Clementine. I’m AJ.”

Violet chuckled lightly. “I meant, where do you come from. People don’t just appear from nowhere with a functioning car and crash it against a tree. Specially not other kids.”

“I didn’t expect anyone else to be here either,” Clementine countered.

“Well, I’ve been living here all my life, so I guess I’m allowed to be a little bit more surprised.”

So that leaves one of her questions answered.

“All your life? In _one_ place?” AJ was amused, to say the least.

“How about I ask first about who I’m supposed to be helping?” He nodded and went back to eating.

Clementine appreciated the somewhat gentler tone that she took with AJ, while still getting to the point.

She took a deep breath and moved her leg a little. Her ass was starting to get sore after being sitting all day, and apparently that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

“We’ve been traveling alone for a while, a year or year and a half.”

“From where?”

“From a little bit west from Richmond.” She didn’t really want to talk about the Ranch, but at least the name seemed to ring a bell on Violet’s head. She continued, “We’ve been going around from place to place, then we just happened to stop at the train station to look if there was something worth taking and we ended surrounded by walkers… thus crashing a car.”

Violet furrowed her eyebrows at that, lightly and contemplative, but only for a few seconds.

“I assume James was _too_ eager to help you and didn’t ask you where were you going, or if you were in a hurry to get anywhere,” she said. She didn’t care about swallowing her food before the start of the sentence.

“We didn’t have a place in mind, really. We were just looking for somewhere to stay and… just be,” she answered.

“Anywhere?” Violet tilted her head back lightly, and Clementine was quick to clarify.

“We’re not running from anyone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Violet tapped her fingers against the table a couple of seconds, just thinking. Her face scrunched so lightly that Clementine almost didn’t notice. Her eyebrows furrowed, skeptical, but she eventually took a deep breath.

“I really want to believe you,” she said, closing her eye for a second, “but it’s hard. I’ve known you for a day. Nothing tells me that one of you isn’t going to kill me while I sleep and take over the school. It’s a really nice place after all, just what you’re looking for.”

“What about you?” argued Clementine. “I’m pretty sure I can count with one hand the people I’ve met who wouldn’t take advantage of a person they helped. You used your supplies on me. What guarantees me that you’re not going to use it as an excuse to get something from us? After all, I can’t walk, and he’s five.”

Violet gave a humorless laugh. “That’s how adults do shit, not us. We have what we need to help you. Food, medical supplies that will last a while, a roof.” She leaned over the table. “The only thing I want to know is if we’re in danger.”

“We don’t like the way adults do things either,” Clementine said, tearing a piece of meat with her hand and putting it in her mouth. Seeing no major change in her demeanor, she adopted a softer expression. “Look, the second I start walking right again, we’ll be out.”

Violet shoulders dropped just slightly, but didn’t look convinced. Clementine noticed that she had been nervously trying to avoid eye contact for a while. “Okay.”

Her back was slouched and she didn’t tear her eyes from the food. The only thing that changed was that now there was a heavy blanket of uncomfortable silence thrown on top of them. The dog whined once, still laying on the floor.

“You’re still don’t trust us, do you?” spoke Clementine.

Violet sighed and tried to make another reassuring smile, the same way she had done earlier, but it just came out as pained. “I don’t think that you’ll try anything,” she said. “I’m trying to trust you. I really am.”

“Then why can’t you?” AJ asked. He had been quiet most of the conversation, so his interruption took Clementine by surprise. “We’re not going to do anything. You and James helped us. Clem’s hurt.” Violet didn’t return his gaze. “Is this about the empty rooms we saw earlier? Did something bad happen?”

Clementine tried to stop him by grabbing his shoulder, but it was too late. She saw as Violet threw the hare’s leg and Rosie caught it in midair; it still had meat in it. She cleaned her mouth using her sleeve and clenched her fist.

“It did,” she said. “It’s absolutely about the empty rooms.”

She really expected to see full anger on her expression, but all she found was someone lost. Nothing. The exact look of a person that lived with deep buried regrets and questions left unanswered, so readable that for a second Clem swore that she was seeing a reflection of herself.

But then the gate creaked. Rosie got up from the floor at the same time Violet’s head turned around, and now James was in the picture. Violet stood up and the conversation was officially over.

“About time you showed up.” For someone that spent the whole day out, he didn’t look tired at all. He smiled softly at the greeting and threw something that Violet caught. “Thank you.”

It was just a twig, with about a finger width and no longer than six inches. She walked back to the table, where she took out the meat cleaver from her belt and started to peel one end of the stick. Soon enough, James left two more in front of her and AJ. When Violet saw the confusion in their faces, she let out a faint groan.

“_Please_, tell me you’ve brushed your teeth before.”

Clementine cleaned the grease off her hands with her pants and picked up the stick. It was kinda flexible, with a clear and red interior and a weird smell, something between spicy and lemon-like.

“We have, just not with… trees?” she replied. “Sometimes we run into houses who have sealed spare toothbrushes.”

“Such luck. What about toothpaste?”

“We ran out a few days ago.” Clementine sighed. “But baking soda and salt also do the job.”

“To each their own, I guess.” Seeing AJ looking curiously at his own twig, Violet smiled. “You have to peel one tip and then chew it a little so it works.”

He took Clem’s knife from its sheath (without asking, but okay) and followed suit. While Violet was busy brushing her teeth, James rubbed the stomach of a very pleased Rosie, holding his portion of hare meat far from her mouth. The expression of bliss on his face almost resembled the one AJ had in the same situation, in a nearly comic way. She got her knife back and worked on her own stick.

“So, does it work with any trees or…?”

“No. This is from a sassafras tree next to an empty barn, not that far away,” said James, giving the rest of his food to Rosie before approaching the table to take more out of the plate.

“We also have one right against the back wall of the school, but he really likes to walk unnecessary miles,” Violet mocked, spitting on the ground behind her when she finished to brush her teeth. James shot a fake-annoyed glance and ignored her.

“It’s used as medicine, and tea,” he continued, but then stopped to think for a second. “Root beer, also.”

“Beer is gross.”

James smiled slightly at Violet’s tease. “It’s an acquired taste that you earn when you’re older and mature.”

He managed to dodge the stick thrown at him. “Shut up, grandpa. Stop trying to make me envy your dead taste buds,” Violet grunted at him with a smile on her face. She left the table and started to walk to the main building. “Goodnight.”

“It’s just four years,” James continued the banter.

“Goodnight!”

When Rosie left to catch up with Violet inside the main building, James smiled and sat in front of them. His movements weren’t slow, but careful nonetheless, as if he was intending to make no sound—which didn’t seem out of character. On the short period of time that she had known him, she discovered that he didn’t talk much, and he was also incredibly laconic, at least most of the time. His voice was also like a whisper; not necessarily of a low volume, but airy. He didn’t look uncomfortable of their presence. He was just like that.

The night arrived fast, but having slept from midnight to afternoon made her less tired than she would have been otherwise. It shouldn’t be that late though, considering that it was winter and the sun sets far too early for her liking (maybe seven o’ clock? She hasn’t seen a working and accurate clock in a while). It was getting colder and she thought about going back inside, but then she would have nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and contemplate life, which was the last thing she needed. She hadn’t even seen half of the main part of the school, and until her leg got to the point where it didn’t hurt to just stand on the floor, she wouldn’t see it.

She huffed. AJ was too busy trying to brush his teeth right to pay attention.

“You don’t seem to have a lot of walker activity over here,” she tried to engage into conversation. James was quiet, yes, but he also looked like the kind of person that didn’t mind talking with someone as long as he wasn’t the one leading. She hoped she was right.

James widened his eyes a little and stopped eating, as if he hadn’t expected her to talk. “Uh. Yeah. We don’t.” He fixed his posture. “There aren’t that many walkers where there isn’t people.”

There had been something bugging her mind from the start, and she squinted her eyes. What kind of approach should she take for that? They didn’t know that guy. He was kind, he helped, but also was everyone that wanted to get something from you. She told Violet that, and James wasn’t an exception.

Remembering the thrown rock and the walker at the woods, she opened her mouth. “Not even one or two? Sometimes they like to group up and move around. I’ve seen it before.”

James cleared his throat and, just like Violet, avoided her gaze. Not as if he was lying, but like _ashamed_ of something. “Have you heard of Whisperers before?”

Clementine arched an eyebrow and shook her head. By her side, she noticed that AJ was now paying attention.

“I used to be in a group, some time ago. They called themselves Whisperers,” he started. His hands were under the table and he was somewhat slouched forward, but only occasionally facing at their direction. “They learned to live in herds, among walkers. Move among them. Sometimes, guide them.”

Of all the groups she’d crossed with, that name never got brought up. It had been a while, a couple of years at least, since she stayed with someone else that wasn’t AJ, but she could clearly recall The New Frontier, Javi and Howe’s, along with the other cities and communities that had crossed her path. It was true that she had moved between walkers before; but as a group? The only and last time she had tried it was a complete disaster. If there was a whole group of people moving with walkers, she wondered why she hadn’t heard about it before.

“Why aren’t you with them anymore?” she asked.

“They attacked a group. I saw the carnage. Didn’t wanna be part of it.” He took a breath. “It’s usually just a walker or two, but, sometimes, a herd appears. It’s not easy to move them around, but I do, because if I don’t, Violet would take them out and I don’t want them to die. She doesn’t mind.”

Right as he said that, the two loose pieces in her mind fit together. He didn’t help them just because he wanted to, but because it was _him_ who moved all those walkers to them. It was guilt. She didn’t believe that he did it on purpose, not for a second, as he was supposed to be picking wood and branches at the time and the sound would have put him in danger. Surprisingly, she wasn’t mad at him. She thought that she should be, given that now she wouldn’t be able to move on her own for a while and her leg would hurt like a bitch for weeks, but he had helped them when most people would have saved themselves the trouble. Maybe that was holding him at the lowest standard, but getting mad wasn’t going to heal her leg.

She didn’t mention it. It didn’t matter. She wondered if AJ came to the same conclusion as her.

“So, how did you get here?” she asked instead.

“After I left the group, I traveled alone for a while. My first time being alone, ever. I traveled from place to place. Sometimes there were communities around, but I didn’t approach, just… watched. I ended up in these woods, then here.”

Clementine nodded with tightened lips and looked to the side. She didn’t know what else to ask. Well, she did want to ask a lot of things, most seemed out of place, or out of the unspoken boundaries.

Knowing that he had helped them out of guilt didn’t change her perception of him. He did help, mended his actions. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Things happened, and he didn’t look like a bad guy, like someone who would ditch them in the middle of the woods at the given opportunity, or someone that would take advantage to get something. She couldn’t count with her fingers the actions she regretted to this day, so if helping them out eased some of his guilt, then she wasn’t going to deny it. And somewhere inside, she wondered, in that case, if Violet felt guilty about something too.

When they settled in silence for the thousandth time that night, AJ spoke up, “What’s beer?”

James chuckled and Clementine couldn’t suppress a smile. “It’s something you drink. Alcohol,” he answered. “It’s not that good. Really bitter.”

“Then why do you drink it, if you don’t like it?”

James shrugged. “Memories.”

AJ started to yawn a couple of minutes later just as Clementine’s eyes started to feel heavier. James turned to the admin building as they walked to the dorms, not before giving Clementine a rag, soap, peroxide and a water bucket to clean her wound. In bed, she passed the rag delicately around the cut, trying her best to not touch the stitches. The soap stung, but she only focused of the fact that a mild burning sensation was a thousand times better than an infected wound _and_ that the peroxide was going to be a thousand times worse. It always was. So when she was done, she settled her leg carefully over the bed and lay down. Being on a bed was still weird. Her pants were dirty from the outside and she wasn’t just going to take them off, so she didn’t sleep under the sheets, resorting to only a blanket which was an inconvenience because it was getting really fucking cold. At least she could take her jacket off.

It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep, since carrying her weight with crutches took more energy than normal. Yet it didn’t last long.

She wasn’t a foreigner to nightmares. That night, she dreamt of fire, of burning, something that she already knew well. Then, a puddle turned into an ocean, and she was drowning.

Clementine woke up with a a breath caught in the throat, grasping it in her hand gently in an unconscious act, but she didn’t get up. She was still in the room, with AJ’s soft snores and the shadow of branches poking from the window. Everything was the same.

She didn’t sleep much that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in my defense i wrote the dream like two weeks ago at 4 am. it mAKES SENSE WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE MAIN TOPIC OF THE CHAPTER. or it doesn't. i don't know i always publish my shit when it's like,,, 1 am.
> 
> anyway. look. i know said that i would publish chapters when i've got ready the next one and a half, and honestly by now I should have chapter 4 and 5 ready. and I would have them, yes, if i hadn't decided that, for a reason, chapter 4 needed to be fucking 8000 words long.  
I don't know what the FUCK i'm going to do. It has important info and I want to split it but I don't know Where. It's a fucking Monstrosity. How the hell did i finish it in less than a week. what the fuck do I do.  
So yeah be prepared for next chapter to be either half the information or fucking 8k words long. love ya. i'm having a crisis.
> 
> ALSO i know this is like,,, slow and shit but i promise we're going to get There. Soon. Maybe not next chapter, but Soon


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've decided to split the chapter bc yeah. sue me
> 
> and I didn't proofread this because i don't know why tbh but i'm tired.  
publish now regret it Later

A couple of days later, a storm brought a thick blanket of snow to announce the peak of Winter.

She had never been too fond of the season. If you had asked her nine years ago, she would have said that it was too cold and she couldn’t go outside, but at least watching the snow was cool. Now, though, it meant a completely different thing.

Moving from place to place was difficult, just like finding food and a roof to settle for the night. And that was just the survival part. Memories were even harder, since now that everything was white it was so easy to remember the blood that once stained it. She didn’t remember the cabin group with as much sorrow as before, and now she could step over frozen puddles on the road without being overwhelmed by fear, but she didn’t exactly have a nice time thinking about it. She still did nonetheless.

Sometimes she wondered if Mike, Bonnie and Arvo were still alive, and even when she had had years to think about that, she never could figure out how she felt about any of their possible outcomes. She wondered about Luke, how he could still be alive hadn’t it been for her decision to approach him on the ice, or if they had just avoided the lake altogether. How everything could have changed if she had taken other options. How she wouldn’t have ended on the snow, in front of the two bodies of her friends, and carrying a child who she’d assumed dead. Yes, winter didn’t carry the best time of her life.

At least now they weren’t on the road, and the snow meant that AJ was turning six now. That was nice.

She woke up cold and thanks to AJ calling her name. She kept her eyes closed, and squeezed them harder when the sunlight hit directly on her eyelids. Hearing a poor-disguised giggling, she lifted a smile, but didn’t open her eyes.

“Clem! I know you’re awake,” AJ scolded her.

“I’m not.”

She opened her eyes when a snowball landed right on her face. AJ started to laugh after she sat straight up and the snow went down her shirt.

“There’s more snow today!”

She was glad he didn’t share the same feelings about snow.

“I noticed,” she said, half jokingly annoyed and half really annoyed. She already felt cold, there was no need to accentuate that. “It started last night, but _you_ went to bed too early.” She huffed and let herself fall onto the bed again. “This morning I’m paying the price.”

“It’s not my fault that you always wake up late.”

“I do not!” AJ laughed as Clementine threw him a pillow, for the lack of snow inside the room (fortunately).

She was glad that he was smiling. If they were still on the road, they may have not been able to play around.

AJ moved her crutches closer and waited. When her foot accidentally touched the ground, she hissed, but it didn’t hurt as sharply as before. Violet told her to not walk much. AJ told her to not walk much. James told her to not walk at all for the first week. She didn’t listen. By now, she had walked the other dorm hall, part of the small graveyard, met the first floor of the admin building (she didn’t want to go through the pain of going up the stairs yet), and know better the courtyard; and she didn’t regret it. Other than that, between the things she could do were sleep, watch AJ draw with some art supplies he found in the closet, go play with him outside, and read the books that Violet gave her—which, to clarify, made her discover a joy for reading that she never knew existed (she hadn’t had too much time to read on the road, or a book, for that matter). She also talked to Violet, sometimes, when she didn’t disappear on the main building, and it was nice. Violet was nice, but she was also gone hours a day. Yet not as much as James. Clem worried that AJ was getting bored easily, so she just wanted to regain strength on her leg to follow him around the place.

She also wanted to walk. For obvious reasons.

Putting on the boots that Violet gave her, she grabbed her hat and walked out. She didn’t consider getting something apart from her jacket, since it kept her warm enough and her white hoodie wasn’t as thin as it looked. AJ didn’t want a jacket. He was just like that. But Clementine knew that just a couple of minutes outside would be enough to teach him, so she didn’t push.

AJ, faster than her now, ran to one of the dinner tables as soon as they opened the doors. The weather wasn’t much colder than the prior days. The sun shone annoyingly bright and she was forced to squint her eyes when the sunlight reflected on the snow. A couple of inches had fallen last night, enough to bury her to the ankle as she walked closer. AJ made her some space on the bench, right next to the burn barrel, and she sat in front of Violet. James tossed her a small bowl from the other side. Oatmeal.

“You finally join us for breakfast, I see,” Violet teased. Her sleeveless vest had now been replaced by a grey and black varsity jacket, with yellow banded collar, waist and wristbands along a big red “E” on the chest. It was a couple sizes too big and it looked clean, as if it had been stored on the top of a closet for seasons.

“Sorry.”

Violet gave her a sympathetic smile though. “It’s fine, really.” She leaned back, dropped the spoon on the bowl with a light ‘ding’ and left it in the pile with other two empty bowls. Clem realized then that she was the only one that needed to finish. Violet grabbed something from her side on the bench. “I found the third _Lord of the Rings_ book if you still wanna finish it.”

She grabbed it and settled it on her side immediately. It was old just like the other three. The cover was faded, and the texture of the pages was worn, showing the scars of its survival from some kind of water-involved massacre.

“Thank you,” Clementine sighed with some relief. “You were right. They’re good.”

“I’m glad. I know it gets boring, not being able to go outside _and_ having to spend the time by yourself with us being out and all. I’m sorry.”

“I manage,” she said, then turned to James. “You’re here today, uncharacteristically.”

She could hear AJ trying to mumble that word under his breath.

“Yeah.” He shifted on his seat, with the hands under the table. He was wearing the same clothes, but the bandage on his arm wasn’t there anymore. “There’s not much walker activity outside today. The cold freezes them out, mostly. I still have to go look for some other things outside, but I’ll be back soon.”

“You should take Rosie in case shit happens, you know?” The dog turned to look as Violet’s mention of her name. She was lying close to the barrel, where someone had cleaned from snow. “The ice can, and will, get dangerous.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will but you should _still_ take every precaution,” Violet insisted, then turned to Clementine. “You should too. Maybe today the weather decided to go easy on us, but from now on, every day could have a storm. Don’t want you falling on the snow and reopening your wound.”

“I _am_ careful. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Violet rolled her eye, but still humorous. “Well, you did crash a car.”

“Should I be careful too? I think I’m careful enough,” AJ said. Clementine smiled at him, and when she looked at Violet, she saw her lips curving too.

“You are, indeed.”

James got up from the table and started to pick up the dishes after Clementine left her bowl next to the others. He looked at Violet. “Should I stop to hunt?”

“I went fishing this morning. We have enough.” He nodded and walked inside.

AJ perked up. When he did that, his eyes got wide and he lifted his eyebrows, with a big grin on his face that made his cheeks look even more chubby. “Can I go fishing with you next time? I don’t wanna stay inside all day anymore.”

Violet seemed a little surprised by his sudden plea, and then smiled again. “Of course you can,” She then stopped to look at her across the table. “But you should ask Clementine too, if she lets you.”

“If you don’t mind.” It was _hard_ to deal with a five (six now?) year old, and Clementine didn’t want to make Violet take a responsibility that she may not want. When she looked at her with sorry eyes, however, Violet just shrugged. “Maybe I can tag along too.”

“That would be nice. The stream is less than a mile away, so you shouldn’t be getting much trouble.”

Usually, when Violet smiled, it wasn’t a full blown, showing-teeth kind of smile, but actually tight lipped, almost shy. If she saw any other person smiling at her like that, Clementine would stay even more skeptical than normal; but by the way Violet’s eye wrinkled at the edge and its color looked lighter, she knew that it came from a better place than one of fake politeness.

Violet now stood in front of the fire, with AJ petting Rosie a few feet away. She didn’t zip her jacket, so Clem could see her wearing the same shabby green shirt of the other days. The gauze that pressed against her eye didn’t have the bloodied edges anymore, and it looked whiter. She must’ve changed it over the night.

Clem, still sitting, relied on drumming her fingers over the table. At least now she didn’t have to rest her leg on the bench (she _should_ but she didn’t exactly _had_ to).

“So, what are the plans for today?” Clementine tilted her head slightly backwards to take a breath. The ice wind hit her face uncomfortably. Her skin was always warm, maybe too much.

“I have to shovel the snow from some places, but that’s about it. I lit one of the fireplaces inside, so if you want to hang around the main building it's fine.” A realization seemed to hit Violet’s face, because her eyebrows shot up for a second. The hidden meaning of Clementine’s question that was less of a ‘what do you have to do’ and more like a ‘what can _I_ do now’. All the answers she had been receiving when asking for things to do were ‘take her of your leg’, and it wasn’t doing anything for her anxiety. “Or, if you want to help, you can boil some of the clean snow to purify it and shit, and save me a couple of trips to the stream and all. You can also help me make dinner later, if you want.”

“Can I do that too?” AJ asked, and Clementine knew that she could appreciate an extra pair of hands.

“Mhm.”

James came from the building with some pieces of rope tied to his belt. Now in daylight it was easier to see the two knife sheaths on the sides of his thighs, making her less worried for his safety. He called for Rosie and tied a leash to her collar. Seeing him getting closer, Violet grabbed a metal canteen that was cooling on ice and held it in front of him, but when he tried to pull, she didn’t let it go.

“Before it gets too cold?” She squinted her eyes.

“Yes,” he answered, looking right back.

“You’ll be careful?”

“I will.”

She let go and James retreated the canteen to secure it on his belt, tight enough so it wouldn’t clink. Violet grabbed a small shovel resting against the table. “I’ll start making lunch in about… four hours, so if you’re not here by then, you’ll fall behind.” She walked to the place where the bonfire usually was and started to push the snow. “And it’s your turn tomorrow. I’m tired of that shit.”

“Don’t worry. I know you don’t know how to cook.”

“Oh, fuck you.” She flipped him off. “But don’t die.”

He opened the gates making a high pitched sound and, just like that, they disappeared into the woods.

AJ went inside to find a jacket. He realized that it was too cold. Clementine was right again.

The silence fell and she could only hear the shovel against the snow from behind her. Violet was taking her time. The fire wasn’t really a priority for other than the water and food for later anyway. Clementine turned around, now sitting and looking at her direction. The spot was getting cleaned up pretty quickly and she just needed to push the snow that was covering the pot hanging sticks. Clem put her elbow on her knee and rested her chin on her hand.

A question flew around her head, but when she opened her mouth to say it, she closed it immediately. Her stomach fell into a deep void when she thought about it. What it embarrassment? She wasn’t one to get embarrassed about simple questions, or go shy about anything; so she took a breath, and prepared herself for whatever came out of her mouth.

“So, are you two dating?”

Violet turned around with an eyebrow arched. Her mouth, in an uncertain smile, opened and closed once, then tittered.

“What? You want to get with him?”

Clementine mimicked almost the same expression.

“What? No!”

“I mean, understandable, really. Can’t judge you.” Oh, she was really laughing at her. “I’m so sorry to be the one that tells you that he is, in fact, as gay as I am.”

“Oh my _God._” Clementine pressed her hands into her eyes. “Stop laughing at me. It isn’t that funny.”

“It _is_ though,” she laughed again and Clementine felt the blood gathering on her cheeks. “Good lord, was it really not that obvious? Does it really look like we’re dating?”

“It doesn’t. There was too much use of the word ‘friend’, and you also would have told me by now. I just needed to ask.”

“Well, in that case, I’m his friend and in the obligation to tell you that, if you like him—”

“I _don’t, _jeez.”

Violet chuckled again and returned to the snow, but Clementine didn’t have anything else to do.

“You’ve known each other for a while?” she asked, her chin still on her hand and faintly muffling her voice.

Violet stopped working and settled the shovel on the ground. It didn’t bury into the dirt, she was just leaning on it. “We haven’t, to be honest.”

Clementine looked away before gazing back. “So what about his whole ‘walkers’ thing?”

“His what?”

“That he doesn’t like killing walkers,” she repeated. “We came across one when he pulled me out of the car, just one simple enough to kill, but he just… lured it away.”

Violet stilled, before exhaling and rocking slowly back and forth, still leaned on the shovel.

“It’s really something you should let him explain, mostly because I don’t know how,” she muttered in a lower voice. “He kind of… protects them. Thinks they are closer to people than what others may think. Please don’t ask me why, I can’t really answer.”

Clementine blew out her cheeks as if something heavy had been slowly pressing onto her.

She couldn’t wrap her head around about walkers being _like_ people. For a second she felt as if a single, cold drop ofsweat slid down her back.

“And what do you think about it?”

“Oh, I think he’s fucking nuts,” Violet’s response was quicker than others she had received from her. “But he’s my friend, you know? And it hasn’t killed us yet. Moving them around it’s more kinda like an advantage now.”

_Does James really believe that?_ Clem thought. _Are all Whisperers like this? Do they all walk with walkers because of the possibility that they could be people? Could they be worse?_

“I’m going to ask you for something,” Violet interrupted her head, which Clem was kind of glad she did. “Don’t try to question a lot about that, or talk to him out of it. He isn’t really doing anything that could potentially harm us right now, and he knows boundaries about… beliefs and shit. I don’t believe the same bullshit he does, and he know that while I try to respect his wishes, I’ll kill the walkers that get on my way.” She spoke that last part with determination. The word ‘bullshit’ maybe more bitter than she intended. “But I try. I owe him a lot.”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “As long as it doesn’t put AJ or me in danger.”

“That’s fair.”

AJ came back from the dorms with his reddish jacket, looking cozier. Violet was in the middle of making the fire, gathering dry wood and twigs. Igniting the first flame with matches was the easy part, keeping it alive wasn’t. The boy was excited about finally doing _something _that could be considered productive, so he ran to look for empty metal buckets that could be used to melt the ice.

“There’s another shovel close to the gate, but you can use this one and I’ll go get—”

“I’ll get it,” Clementine interrupted Violet and started to walk towards the wall, leaving one of the crutches behind. Violet didn’t try to stop her.

Walking with only one made her slower and even more unstable but now the wound didn’t hurt as much, which allowed her to at least put the foot on the ground without having the primal urge to scream. And while she couldn’t place too much pressure, because hurting less doesn’t mean not hurting at all, she needed to start using her leg again. It wasn’t like she was going to dig anything, it was just picking up soft snow and placing it in a bucket. It didn’t require too much strength.

It took a couple of seconds of looking around to find the shovel against the brick wall. It was older and more rusty than the one Violet had, but it would do the job. She grabbed it, and tried to balance herself with one crutch and the shovel. It fell once.

Then she realized a foul smell coming from somewhere.

It took a couple of seconds to get to her nose, and when it did, it hit like a hammer to the face. The smell wrapped around her head, and it was like getting drowned in the water of a sewer. She wasn’t new to it. She had smelled it a thousand times before _and_ had thrown up because of it. The pungent, heavy odor of death. And it was close.

She dropped the shovel and lifted her shirt to her nose, lowering it again to smell from where it was coming from but immediately regretting it as the bile pushed up her throat. It was coming from outside, at least, but why would they leave it to rot there? Didn’t they burn them? Didn’t they get rid of the bodies? Determined to find out and stop it, she headed towards the gate a couple of feet in front of her. She could _maybe_ respect James’ policy of not killing walkers (those that walk, that move, that _eat_), but she knew where to draw the line.

“Violet?” she called, and heard a confused ‘what?’, but didn’t wait for her as she opened the gate and followed the wall a couple of feet.

She saw the culprit to her left, partially covered by a thick bush. It was the body, looking at the wall in a fetal position. The one she saw when they arrived. _Lord_, she had really forgotten about it. It was easy to miss, since its clothes were neither vibrant nor clean as to stand out from the surroundings, and the vegetation around hid most of it, from its covered head to the broken boots. The jacket it wore was the same one that Violet had on, but more ragged. She didn’t have to wonder why.

But on top of all that, it fucking _reeked._

“Clementine?” Violet appeared soon, with an extra, smaller pair of footsteps following behind. “Is everything okay? What happened?” The movement stopped abruptly, and Clementine wasn’t watching but assumed she saw, and _smelled,_ everything. “Oh.”

But for a reason, she didn’t sound surprised at all.

Clementine approached the bushes with her shirt no longer on her nose. The smell was still terrible, but bearable. There was mud on the whole back of its clothes, as if it had been dragged on the floor, and a spot of blood that once came from the side of its head stained almost the entirety of the white cloth like a spider web. She saw the rotten and mid-decomposed skin of the hands, the maggots eating across and moving to scrape the bones, some of them appearing from under the clothing. A macabre scene, yet not something she hadn’t seen.

“Is it a walker?” AJ asked, now right behind her, and she frowned when her first thought was to tell him that he should cover his nose instead of his eyes; he was accustomed to dead people by now. She didn’t say anything.

“Well, if it was then it’s dead now.”

“He’s not a walker,” Violet interrupted, her voice now low. Her arms were crossed and her eye was half lidded as she stood there, almost shrinking back. When Clementine and AJ looked asking her to continue, her expression twitched back and forth, with her eyebrows furrowing and then not, and wrinkling her nose. She took a deep, painful, breath. “He… he’s he reason I’m in this situation. He’s the reason that they’re _gone_. He’s the reason my friends are _hurt_.” Her voice wasn’t brittle, she wasn’t changing tone, and her eyes weren’t watery either. Replacing that, she spoke with such sharp venom that it physically hurt.

“Did you kill him?” asked AJ, and Violet shook her head in fast motions, taken aback by the insinuation.

“No, no,” she answered, and her voice suddenly thinned. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to.” She took another breath and walked closer, now besides Clementine. Her stare fell into the corpse and lingered for something more than five seconds. “I wanted to take care of him, but… guess I forgot.”

“How did you not _see _him?” Clementine’s voice was maybe delivered harsher than she intended to, because she saw a twitch on Violet’s eyebrows. “He’s not that far from the gate, and you go hunting almost everyday.”

“It’s not that I didn’t see him.” Her arms tugged to herself even closer. “I guess I just didn’t want to.”

Clementine opened her mouth, but closed it again. Violet was refusing to look at the body, preferring to turn and watch the forest instead. She bowed her head, and her jaw was tightly clenched, but aside from that, her whole body wasn’t tense, but… tired.

“Violet,” Clementine looked at her direction with soft, careful eyes, “what happened?”

She avoided her glance in a soft turn that would have been missed by most people. “It’s not a short story, or a pretty one.”

Clementine inched a little bit closer. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell us.”

Violet’s head jerked on her direction. “That’s the thing, Clementine. There’s no way that you, or anyone, can help.” She didn’t speak with harshness, but neither without. Clementine was sure that it was the same tone that she had used for Violet a minute ago.

“Talking helps.” Clementine smiled at AJ as Violet’s expression softened for him. Just a couple of days before, Clementine had made the surprising, but still completely reasonable, discovery that Violet couldn’t get mad at him.

Violet smiled gently at him, maybe just an act of politeness, but stayed there. Clementine took a step towards her. “Do you want to bury him?” Violet’s expression twisted and her fingers of the right hand drummed anxiously against her bicep, and so Clementine realized that this was what it was all about. “You don’t have to remember him as a great person, or forgive him for whatever he’s done, but unless you put him at rest there’s no way that you can move on.”

Violet contemplated for a second, before taking a deep breath and finally unfolding her arms. “I’ll get something to wrap him up.” And she disappeared inside.

When she came outside again, she dropped a white bed sheet that quickly started to take the color of dirt and coagulated blood. Clementine couldn’t do anything, so she just watched AJ helping tie some rope around the body after it was covered. Maybe it was degrading and in poor taste, but Violet didn’t waste a second to think about her options before dragging him across the courtyard, leaving a heavy line on the snow. Clementine didn’t question, and they followed in silence.

She had been to the graveyard before. It was at the left from the gate, and right after the burnt part of the admin building. When they had walked through the place the first time, AJ didn’t know what graves where or why did people kept them, even though she _swore_ that she had told him about that before. She explained that bodies of dead people were supposed to be buried under, and that the graves served as a commemorative for someone you loved. AJ told her that it was unpractical. Clem replied that it was a tradition. She couldn’t say anything else.

There were just a few graves placed right next to each other, a tree closer to the far wall, before a small metal gate leading somewhere else. The graves were exactly three, but what spiked her curiosity was that there was only one cross with a name, “Sophie”, while the one from the last grave wasn’t anywhere in sight, and the other one was broken down next to it. She hadn’t taken the time to pick it up to see if it had an inscription, and chose not to ask.

Violet cleared the snow from a small spot, and when she dug the shovel to dig, she started to speak. “His name was Marlon. He was our leader, and a friend, or at least I thought so.”

“He was the leader?” Clementine tried not to show any surprise, but apparently failed. “But he’s…”

“Another kid? Yeah.”

She had never seen, or _heard_ about a group with only kids.

“There aren’t any adults here?”

“They all fled away when shit hit the fan, so no,” she said, but quickly corrected herself. “Well, there was one that stayed, but she died a while ago. It’s been just us for five or so years now. But that’s not important.”

There wasn’t anything that Clementine could do to be helpful, so she sat on an old tire next to the wall, moving it a little to get closer to Violet. AJ asked her if she needed help with the digging. She told him that she was good, but if she gets tired she’ll let him know. Clementine knew that she wasn’t going to tell him.

“I don’t really know how to explain all this… but if you want to hear it, I’ll try,” Violet said.

AJ looked at her. He sat on the floor with his elbows over his knees. He arched an eyebrow, almost a mirror expression of Clementine herself, and he looked worried. He wasn’t used to read a situation or a person, he was still a kid, but he tried, and with Violet it all seemed to be pretty clear.

Clementine looked at her again.

“We’ll hear you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh yall bet i’m FULLY embracing the “clem’s not a morning person and sleeps til fucking 4 o’clock” headcanon that’s practically canon
> 
> Also, y'all know what's going to happen on the next chapter. it's no surprise. it HAD to happen for the story to move forward. so i have to ask, is it too boring if i have Violet explain the whole situation in dialogue? I don't know how else to do it, but if you have any ideas that would be cool


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope that Violet narrating everything doesn’t make it too heavy lmao didn’t want to make a flashback and change pov yknow

“Have you ever heard of a group called the Delta?” Violet buried the shovel into the dirt. A hard “clink” echoed and she pulled a big rock from the ground. She placed it aside.

Clementine shook her head. “Haven’t really heard about any groups recently.”

“That’s fine. We hadn’t really either. They’re a big community across the river, placed on the military base close to a city, but it pretty much owns the whole place. I don’t know much about them myself, but what I have clear is: they’re in war with another community, they use kids to fight the war for them, and they took my friends.” Everything fell onto Clementine’s chest as a ball of confusing words merged together, but before she could process all that, she heard Violet exhaling in frustration. “I really have to explain this from the start for it to make sense. Do you mind?”

She didn’t.

“We were twelve in total, well, now that nobody had died in at least three years; but this starts only a year ago,” Violet began. “Four of us went to hunt some food like always, Marlon, Brody, and the twins, Sophie and Minerva. It was the routine. We go in the evening, check the traps in the area, come back as soon as possible; there isn’t anything much to it. Yet, at the end of the day, only Marlon and Brody came back. A scared Marlon and a really, really distressed Brody. We immediately knew what happened. The twins were dead.

“What Marlon told us was that walkers got them, mauled them to the bone, and we believed him. We couldn’t find the bodies later either, so we didn’t ask more questions, and we should have, but I… I couldn’t.” Clementine saw her visibly contain herself. Her voice was like a tower, and every word she said was slowly taking bricks off the base. “Minerva and I… we were close, me and her; and Sophie was a good friend, so I shut down. Their little brother, Tenn, and I mainly took care of the graves, just picking up all their things, tearing down the walls and dismantling the entire room to find things to put there.

“Minnie was really musical, with the most beautiful bluesy voice you’ll ever hear; and Sophie was an amazing artist, able to put color on everything. Both stayed together, and their walls were filled with drawings and paintings and old stolen posters. It’s your room now, actually. It was the most colorful room in the school.” Violet stopped, shaking her head when she realized that she had lost focus, but Clementine didn’t mind. “But we tore it all down, so it doesn’t matter.

“Everything drove Marlon fucking insane. He invented a ‘safe zone’ because apparently walkers were appearing out of nowhere and were getting difficult to deal with. It didn’t even get to the train station and it kept shrinking every week. We told him that he should expand it but he ignored us and avoided the problem, like always. We should’ve keep trying.

“Brody always had anxiety problems, but now she snapped more frequently and had even more panic attacks. She was really close to Sophie, so we shared the grief in some way, but when she tried to talk to me I didn’t want to hear it, so I pushed her away. _I _was supposed to be out the day the twins disappeared, but I asked her to cover for me. I think I was putting their deaths on her to… hide the guilt I felt myself, which was a shitty move. And before I could try to make things better, shit went down.

“Jump to a month ago, we’re in the same condition. We’re even more down on food and medicine, the winter is getting closer and everyone’s sad because it’s the first anniversary of the twins’ death. I also had both eyes back then. There’s absolutely nothing to do but sit down on your own misery, which made me the first one to hear the horses. Nobody knew what was happening or what to do. We weren’t prepared to fight, like, _at all; _we hadn’t seen people in years, someone that wasn’t just hungry, scared and alone. We didn’t know anything like this, so we thought we could just wait for them to go away, that it was impossible for them to find a place so well hidden, but we were so wrong. The sound of the horses didn’t stop for a second until we saw them right outside our doors, along people with guns.

“Everyone was outside on the courtyard by now. We didn’t think about hiding, about preparing ourselves or anything. Stupid. A white woman that we had never seen, or at least I thought, appeared in front of the gates. Her name was Lilly, and she demanded to see Marlon. I’d never seen him more terrified. His hands were shaking, he couldn’t talk and his legs were barely working when he walked to open the gates. The group busted it open anyway and surrounded us. When we asked what was going on, they just pointed their gun at us and asked us to keep quiet.” She stopped for a second, and closed her eyes as she took a breath, gesture that she had done a lot of times by now. “The second person I saw was Minerva.”

“I didn’t believe it. When you see someone who you thought was dead so much shit runs through your body that you can’t really feel anything. Marlon and Brody told us she was dead, that walkers ate her and Sophie to the bone. But now she was here in front of us, and I was happy at first, before I realized that she pointed a crossbow at us and her expression wasn’t… _hers_, you know? Why was she with _them,_ and, in that case, why her and not Sophie? She looked away when we asked, so I think I know why.

“Anyway, the woman, Lilly, introduced the whole group as the Delta, a large and stable community across the river, with crops, animals, clean clothes and hot showers. You know, the pretty things. If you think about it, it may seem like a great deal, having a place where things are close as how they used to be before, but we aren’t stupid. We knew there was something else, so they started to talk shit again. My memory starts to get foggy at this moment, but I remember Lilly looking only at Marlon, accusatory, and mentioned something about an encounter and how they were going to take us ‘just like how they gave Minnie and Sophie away’.” Violet gave a humorless laugh and rubbed her eye, accidentally getting dirt over her face. The hole was now almost hiding her to the waist. She still refused to look at the body. “Hell broke loose, as you can imagine. Rosie started to bark but someone held her back. Everyone surrounded Marlon and started to ask him questions, furious, _begging _for him to tell us that it was not true. Everyone was scared. He denied everything. ‘How could you guys doubt me? Why would you betray me like this?’ Fucking bullshit.

“Brody stepped in. She told us how they encountered the Delta that day the twins disappeared, and when they tried to capture all of them and make Marlon tell where the rest of the school was, he offered Minnie and Sophie, manipulating and threatening Brody to keep silence, saving his own ass. He was furious, crying and shaking. He tried to move, but he had nowhere to go. Started yelling about how ‘it was the only option’, but when nobody was buying his shit, he pushed one of the Delta soldiers, grabbed his gun and butted Brody in the head.

“She was fine. Bleeding and stunned, but Mitch was close and grabbed her. Marlon wavedthe gun at us. ‘I had to do it,’ he started to say. ‘I did it to save all of you and I would do it again’. We didn’t really take well the fact that we were expendable.” Violet took a second to finally take her jacket off, as she had been sweating for minutes now. When she rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, Clementine noticed how skinny her arms really were, but also the light muscle tensing when she took the shovel to go back to digging. “You wanna know one of the most fucked up things I’ve seen? That sick woman, Lilly, didn’t do _shit._ The soldier guy was almost launching over Marlon to get his gun back. But I saw her. I saw her raising her hand to stop him from doing anything. She fucking knew. Her sick mind had clear that Marlon wasn’t stupid, that he knew how in disadvantage he really was. If he shot one of the raiders, he was fucked; if he shot one of us, he was fucked. She knew that we weren’t going to accept his bullshit either, that now that we discovered his whole lie we weren’t going to back him up, when even _Louis_ started to scream at him, and after he almost killed Brody, _intended_ to kill Brody… It was going to be enough for him to turn the gun on himself. And she just let it happen. She wanted him to die, just not by her own hand. I didn’t even see a second of hesitation before he blew his own brains out.

“I’d never seen Louis so broken before. Never wanted to.” Clementine caught the tears and tenderness on her voice every time she mentioned someone new, but didn’t comment on it. Violet sucked it up. “Ruby started to cry and tried to get to Marlon, something about still having time, but he was so dead. They all started to freak out, and I honestly didn’t know how to feel besides _sick_. He had lied to us, told us that the twins were dead when he had actually sold them to a group. He threatened Brody to save his own ass and almost _killed_ her. But I also saw him shooting himself. You can’t really experience a lot of emotions when you’re surrounded by people who want to kidnap you, for a reason, and when a friend just killed himself right in front of you.

“Tennessee was just frozen, and I remember trying to reach out to him but then hearing a warning shot. Nobody could move, nobody did. Lilly walked in the middle of the entrance, right next to Marlon’s body. ‘Now, we can all take this as a lesson and continue this peacefully,’ she started her stupid speech, continued by how any other deaths could be avoided if we followed the plan quietly and fast, that all of this was going to be for the _better_. We didn’t wanna leave the school, not for a place like that, because, Clementine, you don’t really believe a person that has you trapped between guns when they come fucking preaching about peace. I knew they weren’t telling the whole story from the start, we all did, or at least… most of us.

“Then Lilly called Minerva to confirm her little story. I still can’t believe it. Her voice was the same, she was the same, but now she held a crossbow against us. She told us the Delta was good, a great and fair place for us, all that while her expression kept blank. Tennessee fell for it, but who am I to blame him? He swore his sisters were dead and he loved them above everything else. They let him hug her for a single second and then led him to one of the carts, and she didn’t say _anything_.

“Apparently they didn’t want to deal with our conscience one by one, so they started pushing us to the carts, like fucking animals. Some of them complied. Aasim was always the smart one, and he knew that we had nothing against them. Ruby followed with Omar, Brody wasn’t in the condition to do anything and I heard someone fighting to grab Rosie. The Delta grabbed the rest of us who refused.

“They hit Louis, who was sobbing uncontrollably. They had me grabbed by the arms and I moved around and kicked, screaming shit to whoever was behind. Then I had the dumbest idea that I’ve ever had. The last thing I remember was kicking someone hard enough to make them release me and grabbing the gun on the floor before waking up sick, weak and in the most pain I’ve ever been.”

Violet came out from the hole and stuck the shovel on the ground. She was full of dirt, snow, and sweat, and Clementine knew that the only thing that she wanted to do was to finish what she had started. She grabbed the body by the shoulders and moved it closer to the hole, that by now should be around three or four feet. AJ helped, holding Marlon by the end to lay him more gently. Clem wished she could do it instead of him.

“So then you met James?” Clementine asked, seeing the body now placed inside. Violet had doubted for a second, but started to pour the dirt back in nonetheless.

“He saved my life, actually,” she answered. AJ ran to take the other shovel that Clementine had left behind, and followed Violet’s lead. She smiled at him, but it faded as fast as it had appeared. “He told me what happened after I blacked out, and what the Delta really is. He knew them, had been close to their city before. When he heard the horses in the woods and noticed who they were, he knew that they only meant trouble, so he did the think he knows best.”

“He sent walkers in? To help you?”

“He seems to be doing it a lot lately,” Violet said. “It was too late for that though. It prevented them to raid and take over the school, yes, but everybody was already inside the carts. He was hidden when he heard the gunshots, and when the horses disappeared, though a bullet managed to hit him in the arm. There were enough walkers to get the group away, but not too many “survived” or entered the school. They aren’t too interested in dead bodies, so I got lucky.

“He told me that he saw Marlon first and immediately realized that there wasn’t too much he could do. Rosie was tied to one of the bars, with blood on her mouth. I assume that the guys from the Delta couldn’t take her with them and when the walkers started to appear they didn’t have the heart to shoot her. She started to attract more walkers with her bark, so James closed the gates, and then he found me.

“I fell near the gate, almost hiding behind it. James thought that I was dead, obviously, but he saw me breathing, and then got closer to realize that my pulse was still there. Do you know how many people survive a bullet in the head? Marlon certainly didn’t, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to. But I did anyway. What James told me was that it was shot at the perfect angle to enter through my eye and exit just a couple of inches out of the side.” She signaled those places with her fingers. The bandage didn’t just cover her eye, but also the side of her face almost to her ear. From where Clementine was, she couldn’t see the hints of scarred and wrinkly skin that poked from under the bandage. “It teared my skin off, fucked my eye completely and fractured my skull a little, of course, but at least it didn’t go through my brain.” Judging by the way Violet spoke, she doubted that she was really thankful of that. “I slipped in and out of consciousness for days, but eventually woke up. My wrist was taped to the frame of the bed for obvious reasons, and I was sick, starving and thirsty. I wasn’t even startled when James walked into the room. He talked to me, and it took a while, but I believed what he said. Also, Rosie had bit him when he had tried to get close, so he was hurt too and it kinda confirmed the story. I freed her later.”

AJ got tired and walked to rest to her side, trying to hide his hard breathing.

“How long did it took you to get back on you feet?” Clementine asked.

“About three days. I was in a coma, practically, so James couldn’t do much more than making me drink water. I was weak, still kind of am, and I’m pretty sure I got some brain damage but it’s not like I can _tell_ you what I forgot. If I did, that is.”

At that point Clementine didn’t know what to tell her. It was everything she needed to know, what she had thought she needed to know, but now she had no idea _why_ she wanted to know in the first place. To judge Violet on her head? Mere curiosity? What was she supposed to tell her now anyway? She _despised _pity. Had gotten it a thousand times. And while that wasn’t what she felt about Violet at that moment, a gesture of genuine sorry stood very close to pity, and she didn’t had the experience to express a difference between the two.

“Why do they even need kids?” She kept asking nonetheless, and it seemed to be filling the empty space. “I doubt that they don’t have enough adults to take care of that.”

“They do, I’m sure, but kids are fast learners and also harder to kill, but they…” Violet stopped, but shook her head. “They train them like military, brainwash them to think that what they’re doing is really worth it. To give their _life_ for something so stupid. That’s what they did with Minnie, and that’s what they’ll do to all my friends.” When she turned to look at them, Clementine saw the tears brimming her eyes. Her voice started to break again. “Tennessee is not a soldier. He’s just twelve. And he likes to draw, play with Rosie, and he still gets scared at night, sometimes. He’s a sweet boy. If they break him like that, force him to kill people… I can’t let that happen, but I’m afraid to be too late anyway. He’s not… the kind of _strong _they need them to be.”

Clementine stood. The grave was done. With the shovel, Violet patted the relief of dirt, then set it aside. Violet closed her eyes and contemplated in silence.

“Do you have any words?” Clementine asked, not looking at the grave but at the spot on the snow with the outline of Marlon’s body.

“None that deserve to be said.” Her head was hanging and her arms were crossed. Clem watched her, now at her side to at least give her an empty sense of company. It took a while, but when she opened her eyes again, they were just as glassy as before.

“Hey.” Clementine placed a hand on her shoulder, and she turned. Unlike the other times, now she returned the gaze.

She hugged Violet, with just her free arm and in pain for having to place her foot on the floor. She tensed, and Clementine thought that she had done something wrong, but after the first two or three seconds of surprise had passed, the slender pair of arms wrapped around her waist. AJ appeared to hug them both from the side. It was not what she had expected. It wasn’t awkward, or forced, or unnatural; and even when Clementine wasn’t sure that what she had done was the right thing, she didn’t regret it for a second. She looked like she wanted a hug, and had embraced her back like she needed it.

It didn’t go unnoticed how Violet tried to hold her tighter, as if she was trying to lift her but not quite, and how she leaned to the side that she knew was Clementine’s good leg.

“It isn’t fair, I know,” she told her, her voice mildly muffled by her shirt. She smelled like sweat and dirt, but it wasn’t important. “You shouldn’t have had gone through that crap.”

“It happens sometimes.” She let go, and then it dawned Clementine that it had been the first time in forever that she had been this close to another person that wasn’t AJ. Violet looked down, where AJ was still grabbing both of their legs.

“I’m sorry, Violet.”

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling gently. “I’m sorry that you had to hear that. I should’ve skipped some parts.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You do cuss a lot though. Clem says it’s bad.”

Violet chuckled and went to grab her jacket from the snow. It was damped, so she hung it to her shoulder. She tried to clean the dirt from her face, but it just smeared more. She cussed under her breath.

“What are you going to do now?” Clementine asked, as gently as before. Her question wasn’t blunt. She was tip-toeing back to a topic that Violet may have considered finished. If she did, Clem didn’t notice.

Violet audibly sighed, but it wasn’t in annoyance.

“It may sound stupid, and the most careless shit you’d ever heard,” she cleaned her hands on her pants, “but I’m going to get them back.”

The statement wasn’t a surprise, neither the determination behind her words. What was surprising, however, was the fear that, with her tone and slight fix of posture, she tried to conceal.

“Do you know where they are?” Clementine kept asking. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Violet said. “I used to think that I might as well turn myself in just to be with my friends again, didn’t matter what James told me about the Delta. But then, you see, _they_ think I’m dead. They _shot_ me in the head. I can take advantage of that. So I’ll figure it out.” Before Clementine could do anything else, Violet stood up and motioned towards the courtyard. “Come on. We’ve got shit to do.”

She followed out of the graveyard, swallowing any question that was left.

When the fire was lit, Violet walked directly to start making lunch. She washed her hands thoroughly in a bucket with the little soap bar, and when she was clean, the cold left her skin as red as the blood on her shirt. Clementine took the shovel again and selected the snow to be put in the cauldron, preferably the most recent. They worked in silence. There wasn’t much left to say, not that any of them wanted to.

AJ didn’t like that. He sensed the ambience in the room and felt the immediate necessity to grab a bunch of snow, shape it, and throw it to Clementine. He was an incredible shoot, to her dismay (only sometimes).

“It’s the second time today, AJ!” She laughed as she shook the snow off her hair.

She grabbed a handful of snow that only hit him on the side. She knew his intentions, so she played along, mostly because it was so gratifying to see him smile.

Dropping the last scoop of snow to boil, she counterattacked AJ’s throws. Last year, they only got to play once or twice, since they spent the whole winter moving around or too sick to be touching snow, but one of the things that AJ loved the most was to catch Clementine by surprise or beat her at anything. It made him feel strong, and Clem knew that, so those times in which she let him win she always tried to make it as convincing as possible.

Violet wasn’t looking their way. A table away, she had settled to lit another fireplace and take care of the fish. Her movements were automatic, not thinking about what she was doing but rather _lost_ on her own head, and there was no reason to dig why.

Clementine shared a look with AJ and grabbed another ball of snow, not pressing it that hard. Just like she intended, it landed by Violet’s feet and managed to disconnect her from her absorbed state. It was simply a benign way to check on her, to test the waters and see if she was crossing the line. Clementine had trusted her with her leg, with the food, and with almost their whole safety, even regarding AJ; and although Violet did end up telling them the story of the school, she still kept herself away. And she didn’t blame her, but it was getting hard to walk on eggshells around someone that you see everyday.

When she looked up to her face, she was greeted by her smile, that in no time turned into a grin. She only had half a second to dodge even more snow. Nobody cared that she had a clear lack of advantage.

Violet didn’t join them for much, only throwing once or twice yet mainly focusing on her task. But it was fine. Now she wasn’t wearing a lost glance, and smiled at AJ when he called to throw her something (most of them hit). They were smiling and Clementine didn’t feel the need to keep her jaw clenched or her shoulders up. The game didn’t last long and, since she was done, she just sat on one of the tables. When James arrived no long after, she could hear the voice of Violet showing AJ how to properly fillet a fish on the table next to hers.

Rosie flashed through the gates and ran to them for pets. Clementine didn’t flinch as much. It was getting easy to cope with the fact that not all dogs existed to tear her skin off, specially watching AJ get happier anytime he got to spend with the dog.

Violet left her workspace. James entered the courtyard with damp calves and slightly dirtied clothes, but completely fine. Immediately after seeing her, he gave Violet what he carried hanging from the rope. There were five pieces of corn.

“You managed to find the last corn of the winter. Impressive,” Violet said, inspecting their state. Maybe not ideal, but edible enough.

“There’re cornfields on this area?” Clementine asked.

“There was one close to the outskirts of the city. Most plants are dead, but some of them have been surviving on their own.” James rummaged inside his pouch and pulled a couple of bags no bigger than the size of his hand.

Violet looked at him reluctantly.

“Seeds?”

“For the greenhouse.”

“And you think they’re still good?”

“You can try. Tomatoes last a long time.”

“You have a greenhouse?” interfered Clementine. “I don’t see you using a lot of vegetables in your meals.”

“I mean, we _had_ one,” started to explain Violet. “It got infested with walkers a couple of years ago, but James guided them out after, you know, he got here. I had planned to start running it again but I didn’t. Didn’t see much use on a whole greenhouse for only two.”

“I can work on that.” Clementine instantly spoke at the opportunity. “I’ve been in some other communities, and I know some things about plants. You’ll need something other than oatmeal, if you don’t want to start shitting bricks.”

Violet chuckled. “That’s actually a great idea. Do you think you can take it though? Is your leg gonna be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s just a greenhouse, not a whole field.”

“But are you su—”

“Violet, it’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

Violet opened her mouth to counter, but closed it again. She sighed.

“I trust you. It’s going to take a while though, they don’t just spurt in a week.”

“I know how plants work, thanks.” Clementine smiled as she rolled her eyes. “And I know my leg will be fine by then and maybe I won’t be here when they come out, but you need a start, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she replied, and Clementine had to resist the urge to celebrate _finally_ having something to do. “I’ll show you the greenhouse later, then. Ask AJ if he wants to go too, or if he likes fishing and hunting better, maybe. I can find him some books his age later anyway. But for now,” she said, walking towards the table again, and shooting James a glare, “did you find salt?”

“Yes.”

“Fucking finally.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just want to say that I KNOW in the last chapter someone commented something like “it makes sense for lilly to KILL marlon” and I just wanna say I READ your comment and IM SORRY for not replying but i didn’t wanna SPOIL, MY DUDE. IM SO SORRY.
> 
> Also uhhh next chapter might take longer than a week, i think?? sorry sndfdsnk


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all still reading violentine? lmao same
> 
> back from the dead with a long plot-driven (kinda?) chapter that i had to rewrite,,,,, like six times. 5k words every draft,,,
> 
> i know it's like ugh, plot, but i REALLY wanna get to the romance you guys  
though who the Fuck is reading this.

“You know taking stitches off is not that hard, right?”

“Shut up. It’s either fast _or_ painless and I’ve already made my decision.”

“So, neither? How considerate.”

“Wow, fuck you.”

But her hands were as soft as they could be. The twenty six stitches were coming off with such ease that she almost didn’t feel them sliding under her skin. Sometimes Clementine had to squeeze her own wrist harder, or contain her breathing abruptly, but it didn’t escalate more than that. A painless procedure, without anesthetics, was unheard of, so the fact that Violet managed to pull them off without putting her in pain much was impressive. Clementine had taken the sutures out of her own arm when she was eleven, and it would have been less agonizing to just leave them there.

Considering the depth of the wound and the way it was handled, it was all going well. The cut was uneven, messy, and still red. The stitches were leaving a path of dots along the line, outlining it, but there wasn’t blood coming from them. When the last one was taken out, Violet cleaned the length of the wound with a wet rag as careful as she could and dried the skin right after. Lacking actual medical supplies, she secured the two sides of the wound using the cleanest tape she could find, cutting a gauze in small pieces to put under it so it only sticks to the skin around. It was quiet, almost nice. They were mostly in silence and dimmed, with the only sound being the brazier, and two candles the light; one close to Violet and the other helping AJ draw on the desk.

“It doesn’t look bad. I’m surprised,” Violet said. Her tone was softer at night, Clem had noticed, and even more when she was focused on sticking precise pieces of tape on her leg. “You got lucky the wound didn’t get infected.”

“I’m still on the fence though,” said Clementine.

“How much does it hurt? Have you felt sick?”

“It still hurts when I use it to stand, but not too much. The headache is fading, also. Guess the car crash didn’t affect me _that_ much.”

“Yeah, you only just fucked your leg for a whole month.” Violet teased, and Clementine smiled.

“But it isn’t so bad though.”

“Not being able to walk?”

“Well, not _that_.” Clementine stretched her upper body, lightly startling Violet from her work. “I meant the school. With James, the walkers don’t really come at the door; we have a roof, and fire, and blankets; and not all the seeds for the greenhouse were dead.”

Violet stopped and looked at her with slightly furrowed eyebrows, but it wasn’t an angry expression. She went back to work.

“You’ve really been traveling for a long time, right?”

“Like a year,” AJ answered, looking back from the desk, “but Clem has been for longer.”

“I haven’t stayed on a place for this long since… around two years ago?” Clementine added.

“You’ve only been here for, what, ten days?” Violet looked at her.

“That says something.” Clementine’s eyes kept on the wound. It would leave her largest scar yet. “But, in all, since this shit started I haven’t really stayed in a solid place for longer than three or four months, and I think that place was only in the first year.”

“Swear.”

“I’m sorry, AJ.” Clementine sighed, but smiled. Then she looked back at Violet. “Didn’t you say you’ve been here your whole life?”

“I have. Lift your leg a little.” She did so and Violet started to wrap the bandage around the wound. “Aside from near towns and the woods, this is all we know. Marlon made sure that this place was impossible to get to. We took down the signs and covered part of the dirt road. We didn’t have any problems for a long time, like I told you, at least before… you know.”

“So you don’t know what is like out there?”

“I mean, now I have an idea.” Violet gave the last tug to the bandage and secured it with two clips. “Although I think it’s even worse.”

“It’s not that bad,” AJ said. “Besides walkers, bad people, food and winter, Clem says that she’s met nice people before. Those who helped you find me, right?”

“And at the start, and the group from which you came from,” Clementine confirmed.

“Hope there’s more people like that left,” Violet kind of whispered.

“I mean, we’re not _that_ bad, right?”

Violet looked up at Clementine and lightly returned the smile.

She rolled back down the pant leg with care and moved to place the candle on top of the drawer. Clementine sat on the bed and adjusted her leg without moving from the mattress. It hurt still, and if she tried to move it too much to the left, it would burn again, but it wasn’t the worst. The water from when Violet cleaned it had given her an instant of freshness, and the bandage didn’t feel too tight as it to asphyxiate her wound. Yesterday, she found a needle and thread to sew the tear on the leg of her pants that was left, but it wasn’t her finest work. Even when she sticked the pieces of duck tape, she still knew that she needed to find another pair. She was going to miss it. It had a lot of pockets.

Violet looked over at AJ for a second with a lost expression. They had found a toolbox with art supplies in the top compartment of the closet, when Violet saw it, she mentioned that it had belonged to Sophie and didn’t know why it was still there; she let AJ have it though. Her semblance lasted only for a second, as she then seemed to brush it off with a shake and ghost a smile.

“That’s looking good, little man. You’re still going fishing with me in the morning?” she asked him. His face lightened up, and it reflected on Clementine’s too.

“Yeah! But I don’t know if Clem can wake up so early.”

“I _can_. Oh my God.”

Violet snickered and walked closer to the door. “You know what to do. If you need anything, you should now by now how to get it yourselves, but in any case James is in his room, and mine is the second door.”

Clementine nodded and muttered a quick thank you.

“Goodnight.”

Violet left the bottle of peroxide and more pills (like three) on the drawer, and taking Clementine’s portable stove, she exited the room. Her footsteps were the only thing that could be heard and they hesitated before disappearing completely.

Clementine gulped down a pill from the old stash.

“What are you drawing, kiddo?”

He stood from his chair and walked closer to her bedside.

“Us.” He lifted the paper to show his newest piece.

It was what she’d expect in a drawing of a kid. The lines were uneven, bodies disproportioned. The color that he managed to get in was escaping from the outlines and going everywhere, and it went from the most pale to the brighter in less than an inch.

He was holding a gun and shooting at what she assumed were walkers. She was behind him (she knew because of the cap), with a smiley face and a knife. There was red covering both of them, and spurting from the holes holes. AJ had taken every color he could find to paint the background, and in the back, there was a small square of maroon. The Ranch, and his fantasy of what the dangers of the road could have been. It made her heart twist.

She smiled at him nonetheless and ruffled his hair. Then, she fake gasped.

“Let’s put it on the wall.” Clementine stood up from the bed, and moved in front of the desk with her crutches.

“On the wall?”

“Yeah! You know, when I was a kid, my parents used to stick my drawings on the fridge every time I showed them one.”

“Fridge? Oh! That thing where you used to store food?”

“Yup.”

“Did every parent do it?” AJ gave her the drawing and Clementine took a piece of tape.

“Most of them, yes.”

“Why? Were your drawings good? Mine isn’t that much.”

“You can improve a lot, yes. Although yours is already better than mine back then,” she said, and stuck the drawing on the wall in front of the desk. “But they did it mostly because they loved me.”

AJ giggled softly. “I love you too.”

Clementine kissed his head. “Go to bed.” He jumped to his mattress and settled in faster than she could.

She blew out the candle next to her and the room became completely dark. After a few seconds of adjusting herself, it was also soundless. She looked up at the top mattress and sighed, closing her eyes. She thought she was drifting away, but it only lasted a few breaths.

“Clem?” she heard AJ’s voice on the next bunk. It was soft, hesitant.

“Yes?”

“…Do you think my parents would have put my drawing on the wall too?”

Now she opened her eyes. AJ never brought up his parents, mostly because he didn’t get to know them; and those rare times he did where when Clementine had mentioned an anecdote, or _anything,_ that involved the time she had known them. She never brought them up either or forced him to know about people he didn’t get to meet.

She smiled softly, but also with her eyebrows pulled slightly upwards. An unconscious gesture. He couldn’t see her, she was still looking at the ceiling.

“They would have. They loved you more than anything, before you were even born.”

She smiled when she heard AJ’s light chuckle.

“How could the have loved me if they didn’t know me?”

“That’s just how love works, buddy. Nobody gets a say in that.”

She relaxed hearing the soft breathing from AJ’s side, but didn’t say anything until he did first.

“Goodnight, Clem.” The sound from the sheets made her assume that he had turned to the wall.

“Goodnight.”

She closed her eyes again and waited.

But now she couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t the memory of Rebecca and Alvin, or any of the cabin members at all. In fact, she could say it was nothing. Her chest didn’t feel heavy, her limbs didn’t ache (too much), and there wasn’t any light or sound that could be disrupting her sleep. Other memories with multiple names in them had poked in her mind, but tonight was finally one of those nights where her head managed to scare away anything that she didn’t welcome, leaving her blank.

Absolutely nothing was bothering her.

Except, something was. She just didn’t know _what_, and not knowing could always be a fatal mistake.

She turned around slowly and raised the covers to her face. She closed her eyes, but not a second later decided that it was best to keep them open. Trying to remember a song, she drummed her finger lightly against the mattress, right in front of her eyes. A slow rhythm for the most part and the lyrics not too extensive. Something about breathing… a grave… What was the melody again?

It was useless. It didn’t keep her more awake, albeit it didn’t make her eyelids heavier either. She wasn’t frustrated because she knew how tired she’ll be that morning —in the road that was a given and there was nothing to do about it— but mostly because she was losing all that time. She could be resting, like a normal person, but her head decided that it was best to stay awake, and she refused to stand and do another thing in fear of sleep coming _just_ in that instant, and missing that chance. Standing up because you’re not going to fall asleep that night, or stay in bed because you need the rest and _maybe_ you’ll get the chance to close your eyes and go. It was a fifty-fifty chance.

So she got up.

She slid her legs out of the covers and onto the floor first, carefully. Her skin touched the frozen floor but she didn’t really feel it. AJ was fast sleep in front of her, his breathing moving the sheets up and down in a way that was comforting to watch. She took the crutches, stood up and straightened the covers. Everything slow, and cautious to not get even the faintest creak of the bed. She messed with the brazier a little, seeing if she could get it to heat the room at least a little. Taking the last look at AJ, she exited the room.

She didn’t want to read. Lighting the candle to be able to see the words would bother AJ, and she would be forcing her vision unnecessarily. She also wasn’t in the _mood_ to read. Nothing she could do about that. _But_ there were places in the school that she still hadn’t reached, and now she had time. Violet told them that if they needed anything they should be able to get it themselves, and she really needed to get out. She could do that on her own.

The light from the full moon was enough for Clementine to see the halls and move around. It was getting colder, and the lack of sound from other people only increased her sensibility for the creaking of the wood. A storm had ruined their plans for the whole day and filled the courtyard with inches of snow, so getting from the dorms to the admin building was a challenge. Her curiosity was stronger than the storm.

Clementine looked around the graffiti on the walls and the broken furniture. The glass cabinet had everything but glass, the chairs were barely holding themselves together, and all pushed to one wall. In the past, it must have been nice, maybe; the fancy designs on the wooden pilasters and chairs, without the pieces of glass from the dysfunctional lights and chandelier on the floor. She stepped on pieces of paper and wood. At the first steps of the stairs someone had placed multiple candles that were now consumed in half, and the two on the first two stair-rails. They left her enough darkness to enjoy the moonlight coming from the window glass for a couple of seconds more.

She hadn’t gotten to be too much on this side of the school, not for any reason in particular apart from being unable to walk too much. She had tried to climb the stairs the first time she saw them, but immediately regretted it when she tried to accommodate her crutches and hit her leg with something. Now, her leg wasn’t going to paralyze her at the most ephemeral touch, so she went up the stairs. One by one. Although she was more confident about her crutch-walking, it took a good couple of tries to think of a comfortable way to go up the stairs. She took a rest at the stop in the middle way, thought about how much unnecessarily impossible the most mundane of tasks had gotten to her, and resumed her route. When she got to the top, she saw that the rooms continued to both sides, and right before the end of the staircase, stood a big pair of doors, just a little bit smaller than the one at the entrance, and that there was a faint light that showed from under.

Violet was awake, and she wasn’t in her room.

Before she could think about retracting silently, the sound and motion of one door opening startled her almost all the way back down.

“A person with four legs isn’t exactly _subtle_, you know?”

Clementine rolled her eyes and walked closer. Violet stood there, leaning on the doorframe with her hand holding on the door not completely opened.

“Har, har. Very funny,” Clementine returned. “Weren’t you supposed to be on your room?”

Violet sighed heavily, but not annoyed. The bags under her eyes looked darker than in the morning. Her fingers drummed against the door before going down to the knob.

“Go to sleep, Clem.”

She tried to close the door but Clementine was quick enough to slide the end of one crutch to stop it. However, that action costed her balance and she soon found herself losing grip.

She didn’t hiss when her leg touched the ground, because it never did.

Violet had been fast enough to grab onto her waist and pull her closer. The crutch fell onto the ground but she quickly regained the grip on the left one. Her head was pushed close to Violet’s neck, and her eyes were still shut tight in expectancy for the fall. There were a few seconds in which they stayed frozen, and then Clementine felt the vibrations from Violet’s chest as she laughed, pulling her up again.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and smiled too.

“It’s okay.” Violet handed her the crutch that Clementine gladly took back. She wore one of those light smiles on her face, the one that could be perceived only by looking at her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“That doesn’t exactly explain why you decided to come to the admin building.” Violet rested one hand on her hip.

“Well, I hadn’t seen what the second floor looked like before, and now the stitches are off.”

“That was literally just a couple of hours ago.”

“It’s enough.” Clementine smiled and gave another glance to Violet leaning on the frame. “Are you going to let me in?”

She rolled her eyes, but moved aside from the door nonetheless. Clementine followed inside.

She saw Rosie lying on a dirty mattress at the corner, but she only raised her head when she entered the room. The office, actually. It was sizable, with a wide desk and comfortable looking chair. The windows were mostly broken, like in all the buildings, and covered with wooden boards and ragged curtains. At the center of that same wall, two glass doors showed the path to the balcony, but they were closed and hidden behind a viole curtain.

“Coffee?” Violet asked and she turned to watch her. So _that’s_ why she asked for her portable stove.

She knew that it wasn’t smart to drink coffee at night, but she took the cup nonetheless. She hadn’t had coffee in months. It wasn’t the best, too diluted and bland, but coffee.

“This is the old headmaster’s office,” Violet said, walking towards the desk, “but he sucked, so now I’m here.”

Clementine closed her eyes for a second to enjoy the familiar sound of the fireplace. Along with a couple of candles lit here and there, that was the only light source. She had never been in that room before, but she immediately fell for the smell of wood, coffee and, strangely, cleanliness. She didn’t even feel Rosie’s wet dog scent from being out in the snow all day, or the mattress that looked anything but clean. The dim lighting, peaceful smell and low bursting sounds made it almost seem… normal. But like the old sense of normal.

Leaving one crutch aside, she walked towards the desk. Violet diverted on the way back to pet Rosie and so Clementine intended to sit on the smaller chair, but when she scanned the room she stopped just by the papers and the notebook on the desk. And now she couldn’t look away.

“Wow. You didn’t tell me you could draw.”

Violet turned her head around immediately and stood up, but didn’t tear the sketchbook from her hands.

The first page she saw was a simple sketch of Rosie on her bed, only half made. The lines were traced with a blue pencil—she assumed not by personal choice—and since it couldn’t exactly be erased, the little slip ups were just corrected by other, more forcefully drawn strokes. She hadn’t shaded it too much, just with small parallel lines in certain areas.

“It just never came up.”

When she turned back to ask for permission, Violet just stood there with her arms crossed and shrugged. However, Clementine could feel the nervous glance burning her back when she turned again to the book.

She went back a few pages. The sketchbook was old, heavily used, with some tattered pages and a stained corner. There were some sheets slipped in that weren’t torn from there. She saw a glimpse of some drawings. Places and parts of the school, people. A guy with dreadlocks, a little kid with a scar on his face, a couple more of a girl with long hair. Most of them weren’t colored, just plain black on white. There were some notes on the edges or next to drawings, a excessive use of question marks, some scratched sketches, and more notes in a different handwriting (“dude stop ur messing with my handsomeness” next to one of a guy, and “go to fucking sleep” at the end of one page with a little “no.” under that was definitely Violet’s). Clementine didn’t want to see much, given that, even with Violet’s approval, she still felt like she was invading privacy; so she didn’t go too far back. Some of the newest pages featured James, and from then the black blots of discarded drawings started to get more frequent, until the latest. Clem discovered that Violet had some odd, but impressive, fixation with birds.

It was nice. Clementine hadn’t really met anyone who enjoyed their time drawing, at least not someone that she had actually _met_. There were some people she knew in her little deflect to the New Frontier who drew when it was needed, but they were all old guys who always looked at her direction with dubiousness. She didn’t see a lot of kids her age around. It was nice seeing people doing things that don’t always revolve around “don’t die”.

“These are really cool,” she said, turning around with the sketchbook still on her hands. “Don’t let AJ see them though, or he’ll ask you nonstop to teach him everything.”

That seemed to get a smile from her.

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said, and Clementine had to let a single laugh of derision.

“You say that when he starts following you around all day. I’ll be sitting here finally enjoying peace.”

Violet rolled her eyes.

AJ wasn’t a bad kid, at all, but, _God_, she could use time alone.

While she was still with a mocking smile on her face, her eyes wandered curiously over the desk. She closed the sketchbook, the rings barely holding up the cover, and leaned in closer, her expression changing to one more tight-lipped. Violet must have noticed that, because she immediately began striding forward.

“Those are not drawings,” Violet had meant to say, but stopped midway because Clementine already had picked up the papers.

They weren’t exactly drawings, at least not like the ones she had seen, but more like a design. A building made ruler precise, top view, surrounded by three circles about an inch apart from each other. The one she was looking at, which seemed pretty new, had a vague line crossing through the space between the main structure and its closest circle, from one end of the page to the other. The sketch varied between papers, but the central building was a clear constant in all of them. For only a second Clementine wondered _what the fuck _was going on, before breathing in in realization.

“You’re going forward with this.” It wasn’t a question, because she knew the answer.

“I wasn’t lying when I said that I’m gonna get them back.”

“I never questioned this, it’s just…”

Clementine dodged her eyes. She knew. She hadn’t doubted for a second back there in the graveyard. It was just… some kind of hopefulness, maybe? Sometimes she looked at Violet, and she saw the small girl that she was, not much taller than her, with wrist that anyone could grasp with only their thumb and middle finger, and then wondered what could she do single-handedly against the gigantic community that Delta was. Was she aware of what that implied? There was some kind of pity behind Clementine’s thoughts, thinking —_knowing—_ that Violet didn’t really know what was living outside of walls. That she didn’t really know what kind of a suicide mission this was.

Or maybe Clementine was just being a hypocrite.

She took what was left on the desk. Every paper had notes, some of them with everything crossed out to the point where she couldn’t distinguish a word even squinting, but she focused her attention on the other ones. There were some ideas here and there with fairly legible handwriting, but the ones that looked older were, for some reason, harder to read. They stayed at that though, only ideas about places from where to start, to camp, and mere speculations about where her friends could be in a place so big like that community. When plans were only based around rough ideas they were meant to get people killed.

And she was completely sure that Violet knew that.

“So this is your plan then?”

Violet’s face contorted, puzzled. She took a deep breath but released it almost immediately.

“I don’t have a plan,” she admitted, and her tone showed that maybe she was just coming to terms with that herself. Clementine saw her adjusting the bandage, but as if she wasn’t thinking much about it. It wasn’t the first time she saw her doing it. “I haven’t done anything. My head still hurts when I’m trying to read something or pay too much attention with one eye. Those are just pointless excuses though.”

Then it weighed her down that Violet didn’t know what to do.

But _she_ did.

Clementine had been part of a siege. She had planned the escape Howe’s and got everything they needed to do so. She infiltrated Richmond on her own without getting caught and then helped Javi overthrowing Joan. She got AJ from the mess that was the McCarroll Ranch. And on top of all that, she had survived _alone_ for years.

Clementine was willing to help, as much as she found out that Violet was willing to listen.

And thus it became a recurrent thing. At night, Clementine would find herself walking to the admin building and slowly going up the stairs. The third day Violet was already waiting at the door; and the fifth, she stood outside the room as Clem tucked AJ in bed. She discovered that some days James liked to make them company and he usually sat on Rosie’s mattress, to which the dog responded with resting her head on his lap. It was still mostly Violet and her.

Violet’s drawings made her a solid base to start. She hadn’t gone to the Delta, but James had been quickly to clarify that he had. He had encountered some groups on his walk far from the Whisperers, and the second that he mentioned he knew Delta, Violet had asked him for a description.

The place took over an entire city, and it had walls. Three walls, to be exact, although Violet said that thinking of it like that was stretching the definition too far. The biggest wall, the one enclosing the rest of the drawing, was just barbed wire, and the second one was made of metal mesh, just a bit stronger. They weren’t exactly to stop people, but walkers, working kind of like a fly trap. The third one, the smallest and closest to the buildings, was the city’s shield. James said that he only could get close enough to see it of the size of his thumb, not wanting to risk getting shot. It was being constantly patrolled, with giant lights to catch whatever came too close at night. He had seen people in big groups getting in and out at horseback, and then come back decimated. He also believed that they had a pier and some boats, but didn’t stick long enough to corroborate it.

Regardless, it would be a lie if she said that they spent all the nights planning. It was winter, and if Violet was sure of one thing was that she needed to wait if she wanted to last more than a day out, which left them with at least two months until the snow started to cease._ At least_.

Some days were exhausting, with fishing, hunting, cleaning the snow and the greenhouse, but they still walked to the office nonetheless. Other times, they were just blank from any ideas, or just didn’t want to talk about the plan, and Clementine went to bed frustrated wondering why she got involved in the first place. But then found out that the plan wasn’t the only reason that she stayed up there. She discovered that Violet kept a tennis ball inside one of the desk’s drawers and that Rosie, whereas amazing as a guard dog, was _shit_ at catching it. James was pretty good at playing poker. The wheels of the big chair often got stuck, and Violet getting progressively frustrated when she couldn’t move around was _so_ fun to watch (even better her groaning when she realized that James and Clementine had been holding their laughter the entire time).

On the quietest nights, Clementine read whatever book she had on her, but it was only a matter of time before she got lost in a paragraph. And when her head lifted from the pages to take a break, she caught herself staring at Violet while she drew. It was mesmerizing, in all honesty. When she was deep in thought, she looked at the page, bitting the thumb of her left hand and playing with one corner of the paper. The end of her pen was already covered in bite marks. Her brows would furrow from time to time, or she would purse her lips or squint her eyes. It wasn’t really a productive reading time for Clementine, since, when she later went to bed, she would realize that she had progressed maybe a paragraph or two.

When her leg got significantly better, she helped move in a chalkboard from what she assumed was a meeting room, and it had honestly been one of the best ideas she’d ever had. Violet drew the “official” outline of Delta and sticked it to one corner, while the board became basically a place to put the notes that she had scattered on countless of papers, but only the useful ones, and organized. For someone who lived inside walls her whole life, she was pretty realistic, Clementine noted, although at times pessimistic. From what Clementine had to offer, she pointed out anything that could go wrong or right, and sometimes spent more time filling the “wrong” side of the chalkboard. Despite that, she made clear that everything was, in fact, a black swan and that she could take the chance. Clem couldn’t find any doubt in the way she talked.

But making the plan wasn’t the hardest part of the process, and it didn’t matter how many hours they spent on it, or how good it was, when they _didn’t know where the Delta was._

All they needed was a city name, but James hadn’t really been careful watching the roadsigns. The only thing that he was sure of was that they would get there following the river, eventually. They searched Marlon’s room for anything with a city name that rose suspicion, trying to enter as respectfully as possible while Violet stormed inside, warning her immediately that if she _had_ to touch something from that mess, they better not be the socks on the floor (gross). But they found nothing more than dirty laundry and personal belongings that they decided to respect. If Violet felt weird about rummaging around a dead friend’s room, she didn’t show it.

Yet, that didn’t stop them. Written on the clean pages the had set the most solid ideas. Letting Violet sneak in by faking a surrender, waiting days for them to get out and James using walkers as necessary were only some of them, but the only thing that they really had as the escape plan was up to the rest on the inside. Violet would fake loyalty enough for them to let her on scavenging or camping trips that they could use to advantage, but getting most of the kids from the school to go on the same mission was highly unlikeable, if not saying stupid and naive to even consider. The plan was one thing, the execution, another.

Clementine had suggested finding the opposite group, but James was quick into letting her know that if they thought Delta was bad, the other group was ten times worse.

They only needed a clue, but they weren’t searching at the right place.

* * *

The first time, the fishing shack was thirty minutes on a walk. The crutches had gotten stuck into the mud every ten steps and her arms were already sore when they got there. Violet was patient with her. AJ, not so much.

Her leg was better now though. She didn’t need the crutches anymore and she didn’t have to be careful with the gash every minute, so the total time split. Still, she had to limp through the path, but it was preferable than having her hands incapacitated.

The shack was a small place, with a table, fishing supplies, other things that were a complete mess and a mattress on the corner. She usually stayed sitting on the steps watching AJ and Violet fishing on the stream, but AJ wanted to go patrol with James that evening. Her leg was considerably better than last time, so she took the opportunity to regain control and went to grab the harpoons.

“How’s the water?” she asked when she stepped outside, seeing Violet leaned towards the river with her hand submerged.

She withdrew it and clenched. “Freezing as fuck.”

“Do you really think we’re going to get something in this cold?”

Violet shrugged, taking the spear from her hands. “Trouts don’t really care. And it’s getting dark anyway so there must be something coming down.”

She genuinely didn’t know how a sleeveless denim vest and _only_ a shirt underneath were suitable for the cold when she could easily keep using that warm-looking Ericson jacket. Then again, Violet’s skin was _always _incredibly cold. At this point she was convinced that Violet couldn’t sense temperature.

While Clementine wasn’t straight up _bad_ at it, her proficiency wasn’t exactly fishing. It required a lot of patience that she did not have, as it was being constantly drained by certain little boy. She stood her ground with hunting though, thing that Violet seemingly noticed. It asked for patience too, yes, but hunting required an active kind of patience. It wasn’t a “stand and wait” activity, but a she had to be smart about it. An strategic wait, forcing her to use all her senses. She spent weeks busying herself in jobs that only asked for a couple of steps, and now that she could move around as she pleased, she surely was going to do so.

“So,” Violet starts, and Clementine turns her head around at the sudden interruption of silence. “Where do you plan on going?”

Clementine blinked. “What?”

“With AJ, I mean.” She cleared her throat so lightly that maybe it didn’t count. “Your leg is getting better.”

“Oh,” is all Clementine says for a while.

Right. They were supposed to leave.

She hadn’t thought about it, in all honesty. At all. They’ve been at the school for weeks now, that’s the longest they’ve stayed in a place for _years_. There’s something that drew her in, disregarding the problem that Violet was facing. Perhaps she was blinded by the feeling of finally having a solid place to rest, to eat, and to be safe; of friends and _people_ to laugh and share, someone who didn’t wish to shot her in the head. And maybe, _maybe_, she had hoped for Violet and James to let them in, to accept their company and even her _help_ with getting those other kids that she didn’t know. Maybe she thought she had finally found a home for AJ and herself.

It wasn’t going to be here, then.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” she admitted, not formulating a reason. When had she planned their passage anyway? “We stumbled here, it’s not like we knew there was gonna be a boarding school. We’ll just avoid Delta, so, south. It’ll save us from the cold, but I heard things were getting complicated over there.”

“Complicated? Another war?”

“Don’t think so. I just heard from a group we hid from that they run from someplace in South Carolina because of some quarrel in between groups. Don’t remember much.” That had happened around three or four months ago, just another group that she didn’t want to mix with. “Being trapped between crossfire isn’t an appealing idea.”

Violet hummed in agreement, but that was it. Uncomfortable silence fell quickly over them and Clementine felt it wrapping around her stomach. Violet hadn’t looked at her much, for not saying that she was avoiding to. She was staring at the river, but had only used the harpoon a couple of times. Clementine could barely see the tension on her jaw. After five seconds of stealthily looking at her but getting no reaction, she focused on the job.

In half an hour they managed to catch three absurdly small fish, not larger than her hand. They were getting fast, swimming along the current, and Clementine was only getting colder and weary. Violet threw the last fish in the bucked and looked at the sky, then frowned. She didn’t need to say anything, Clementine had seen the clouds gathering up. This winter had proved itself to be rash, and she was eternally grateful to whatever luck had dared to cross and given AJ and herself a roof and warm covers. However, the food was starting prove itself harder to get, even for only four people living in a considerably ideal location. She could look at the bones of her ribcage on the mirror when she dressed up, but it wasn’t so different from her time in the road; yet, she had seen Violet nailing a few new holes on her belt a couple of mornings ago.

Just when the silence went from uncomfortable to bearable, Violet set the harpoon on the ground.

“They got smarter,” Violet said. “We’ll have to eat the cured meat.”

“You want to keep _these_ ones for an emergency?”

Violet didn’t have to look at them a second time to sigh in resignation. “Good point.”

Clementine huffed in exhaustion. Her legs hurt and were getting sore. Enough standing up for today.

She went to grab Violet’s spear to store it back in the shack and be over with the day, but before she could walk away, Violet took a breath in.

“You know, I—” She cut herself off. Clementine was now looking at her, but for a moment Violet only looked at the ground. “I really wish you could stay. Both of you. In the school.”

Something inside her made a deep beat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She smiled and it reached her eyes, but it flattened out quickly. Clementine didn’t realize she was smiling back until it faded away too. “AJ told me how you’ve been searching for years now. About the car, about his bleeding feet. About you trying to reassure him that you’ll be okay, but he’s smart. He told me he likes it here.” She chortled, humorless. “And, believe me, I really wish you could stay at the school and not face whatever shit-storm is happening out there.”

Clementine rose an eyebrow. “But?”

“This is not about what we said before, you leaving right after your leg gets better. I couldn’t give two shits about that. But you can’t stay. I’ll leave to the Delta to try to get my friends back, and I don’t know what would be of me if I let you get dragged into this mess. Even if you stay here, I…” She cleared her throat and moved her head again.

_“I don’t know if I’ll come back,”_ was left unsaid, but not undecipherable. In fact, it was the first and only thing that Clementine could think about.

And even when she thought she had assumed it nights ago, now it left an emptiness in her stomach, as if only _right now_ it started to sink in.

“It’s fine,” she forced herself to say. She couldn’t, wasn’t, going to leave Violet talking alone. Even when she wanted to make as if she hadn’t said a thing, as if she hadn’t pursed her lips and tensed her hand. “I won’t fight you on that.”

Even when she did want to.

She offered the hint of a smile, hoping that it would ease the air. It did, slightly, but enough. She was a great actor.

Grabbing Violet’s spear again, she moved away—with a little more difficulty than she’d like to admit. But she didn’t get to turn to the shack and call it a day. Violet’s expression hardened at something behind her just before she could hear what it was.

A low groan disrupted the ambience of the woods. Slower than in autumn, it tried to limp closer to them. It wasn’t near, a couple of feet past the shack, but a walker alone wasn’t a menace anyway.

James was supposed to keep the walkers away.

It took no more than a few seconds for Violet to take it down, moving her cleaver like it was her hand. She walked a little further to see if anything else came by. She, as Clementine did, knew that a single walker meant an entire horde could be appearing at any second.

“Something happened to them,” she said in a hurried breath, walking back to her.

AJ was in danger.

She must have seen a change on her expression, because the reassuring words came immediately. “I’m not saying they ran directly into trouble, but at least they must have seen something that forced him to turn them around,” Violet took the spears from Clementine’s hands and tossed them barely close to the shack’s entrance, “because this isn’t an accident.”

“Are we looking for them?” Clem says, voice thin at the smaller possibility that AJ could be in danger. Violet’s attempt could only do much. She knew the basic outline of the perimeter around the school, where James and AJ are supposed to be, so maybe they could be able to track them down.

Violet hesitated before grabbing the bucket of fish. “I have to get you to the school first,” she says, furrowing her eyebrows, although whatever emotion she’s feeling isn’t directed at Clem. “You’re better, but your leg is still in no shape to be walking around the woods, or run, if we crash with more walkers on the way.”

“I’m—”

She didn’t have the time to get to the half of her protest before the growls and moans from walkers started to come through the forest, freezing them immediately. Violet gave her one look for the two seconds they wasted paralyzed, with dread creeping up their backs, then dropped the bucket and grabbed her hand. Clementine could only take a breath before they started running.

Faster than they should have in the winter, walkers started to show from every side of the woods, but they seemed to come from east, and maybe a little bit south. In no time, the sound of the girls’ movement was the focus of their attention. Violet let go of Clementine’s hand when she picked up the pace, but still looked back every few seconds. They crossed the bridge, and sprinted through the path of the school.

A few shots made Clementine suck in all her breath. Gun shots. They weren’t right on their side, but close enough to be heard.

Violet turned right to look at her. “AJ has the gun.”

“It’s not him,” Clementine clarified. The revolver was a higher pitch and the round stayed a few seconds longer than the ones that were blasting through the woods. A shot ran again. And again. And again. “He only has two bullets.”

Violet became even paler, but kept moving forward. Most walkers from their backs weren’t close enough to be seen, but as they got further from the shack, they discovered the oh so pleasant surprise that the walkers from the east had already taken a fair advantage, forming a wall that blocked the way to the school.

“That can’t be Delta, can it?” Clementine said, in a rushed tone. “You told me they’re supposed to be far. What could they be doing here?”

“I don’t— I don’t know. But even if they aren’t, it doesn’t make it any better.”

Because there has to be a reason as to _why_ James took the decision he did. They both knew.

The trees were only going to provide protection for only so long. Unsheathing the knife in one swift motion, Clementine stabbed the ones that Violet couldn’t, that were either from the other side or getting way too close. Her knee technique was currently unavailable, so she relied on carefulness and admitting that, for now, following Violet was the best idea.

Except when it wasn’t.

It took a single wrong turn for everything to turn to shit. Violet crashed with a walker from the side, barely escaping its teeth, and if their sound and careless presence was already enough to catch the walkers’ attention then this only meant death. They found themselves surrounded, intersecting with another herd, and more coming from deeper into the woods.

Clementine felt a hand tugging her foot, and out of instinct kicked down hard. It pierced the skull, but the searing pain that flared up her left leg made her instantly regret it. She fell on her back right next to the corpse and just in time to pick her knife and stab one more walker that dropped on top of her.

She heard Violet scream her name. She could see her as she threw the corpse to the side, trying to get closer, but she was completely surrounded, with a wall of the dead keeping them apart. Clementine tried to ignore the pain and get up, but it took her a fraction of a second longer, which gave time for another walker to launch onto her. In a second, it was down. In the next second, two more were close enough again.

There was no way she could get past them to get to Violet. Nor she do the same.

“Run!” she shouted, and swallowed a low groan on her throat forming through the pain. “I’ll meet you at the school.”

She didn’t stick around to hear Violet protest. As soon as she yelled, she knew that she had to choose between worrying later about something tearing in her leg and _run_, or die. She decided that venturing into the other side of the woods was the wiser decision.

Some collusion and five or six minutes later she stopped running.

She was alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, it's been a Wild month in Chile (renuncia piñera)
> 
> you'd ask me "dude, it's been like a century, you should have this whole thing already finished by now" and the answer is absolutely Not i'm still writing and struggling like everyday
> 
> i can't believe it's been like three months and i STILL post at 1 am.
> 
> anyway i hope u r all good


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had to put uh. Thoughts on this.  
also i'm alive. barely.  
Changed some minor things on past chapters:  
—A city name.  
—the snow is like. Light. I don’t know how snow in specific states of the US work. sue me.  
Also general location but you did not know that so

If there was something that Clementine knew about the forest, was that the easiest thing to get from it, was lost.

And she realized it this time ten minutes after losing the footpath.

She didn’t know where she was, or even her general direction. At some point, she remembered crossing some kind of major bridge to get over the river—where the walkers struggled to cross. But that was it. The rest was green, trees and bushes blocking her way a handful of times, and darkness.

She collapsed with her back on a tree. There were no walkers anywhere close, but she didn’t want to put too much trust in herself when it was dark. She sat on the root, the only thing helping her avoid the thin layer of ice on the ground from her ass. She grabbed the damp ends of her pants and pulled, but only lifting halfway was enough to spot the red stains on the bandage. It wasn’t much, the blood barely going through the second layer of cloth. It still hurt like hell though. She didn’t have anything to clean it, hence decided to leave it alone.

The school was on the northern side. Clementine ran away from there, on the opposite direction, but she couldn’t be sure by the amount of times that she turned. She crossed the river through a narrow bridge a while ago, only to lost it getting away from walkers. Everything looked the same. Maybe if she could find the Pole Star…

Which would have been easy if she could _see_ past the top canopy of trees, and if it weren’t completely overcast.

Resigned by now, she sighed. It wasn’t going to be enough anyway. It was completely dark now, not late, but walkers didn’t care about time to become more sneaky. She needed to try and get to the school. At worst, she was forced to make a camp for the night. She refused to die in such a way stupid way, and so close to safety.

So she walked. Her strongest shot was to follow the river, but crossing through dense vegetation without a clear view wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She had to look for a track. Finding one also meant taking the risk of getting trapped in a group of walkers—again. But it wasn’t the most complicated risk she had faced anyway.

Were AJ and James in the same situation?

No. She immediately ran from that thought. James knew the woods. Better than her, better than AJ, maybe on par with Violet. He was better off with James on finding the way back to the school than if he were with her. She needed to trust James. She wanted to trust James. It was much more difficult to trust people when it came to AJ’s life.

They’ll be fine. Violet was probably already at the school.

Clementine was alone. With the intense pain in her leg returning. In the night and mostly lost.

She’ll be fine too.

It wasn’t long before the sound of the river started to get to her ears, so she took a mental note of its direction. The motion was encouraging for the most part, but it obstructed the hearing of her surroundings. In the excruciating twenty minutes that she spent limping slow and careful, she found a small track, but the sky was too clouded to see any stars. It was cold, and a storm was near. The wet but clean sounds of the ground quickly replaced the plants and bushes that moved at every step. She tried to avoid walking over the thin layers of frost. The sharp, citric smell of pine trees and wild vegetation that was usually pleasant started to become overbearing.

Her nose was stuffy, and it would soon start becoming a problem. Birds and other strange noises weren’t surprising this deep into the forest, but it never failed to put her alert. She trusted her vision to an extent, and being unable to hear due to her own breathing, walking, and worse, the river streaming close to her like it carried rocks, placed a tension on her shoulders that not even two nights of sleep would carry away.

It had been a while since the last time being completely alone. For years she had AJ to trust when her senses were too overwhelmed to pay attention to the little details, yet it didn’t erase her memories. There was a time when she was used to being alone, and she learned to control herself. Her mind wasn’t going to convince her too easily with its tricks, which is why it took her a minute to notice that the voices she was hearing were real.

They were voices, and movement, coming from afar near the river.

And the smoke of campfire.

Her first reaction was to move back into the woods where the trees stood closer together, but there wasn’t any movement coming from her path, or anywhere else within earshot. Only there, and it stayed there. She needed to know if there were more coming, see it, so she could get farther away. Her shoulders dropped when the movement stopped next to the voices and nothing went or came their way. If they decided to set camp, the walkers must have stopped coming. If James stopped sending walkers, that meant they were safe back at the school. That, or he ran out.

Two more smoke sources emerged short after, all proximate to each other. Not a small group like she had hoped, but larger, equipped and more than capable to take down a girl with a leg and a half before she even got to somewhere safe. Maybe also a teenage Whisperer and a little boy.

She considered turning back, but all the time she wasted would be lost, and she was better keeping the same direction. Dodging them would be hard, but not impossible. At the distance she was at nobody would be able to hear her, but as she kept walking through the same track, her steps turned cautious. The flow of the river started to get even closer, full and crashing against the rocks. The river wasn’t deep, probably only to her waist, but she couldn’t cross it walking in the water even if she liked to. In no time, small hints of rain prickled the skin of her face. She hurried her step.

The smoke became harder to spot across the trees. She could only look at the sky for only a few seconds before the rain bothered her eyes. There was no calming to the rain now. She was starting to feel it. A storm, snow and cold that would make her clothes heavy and blood vessels narrow. She _needed_ to get to the school. The trees weren’t going to be enough protection, and making a fire there was a death sentence. She had to get out, or die of hypothermia.

Then, the track bifurcated. To the right, she spotted the remnants of a wooden bridge.

And to the left, heavy steps against the mud.

“Who’s over there?”

She barely managed to find her way behind a tree before the light of a flashlight exposed the track just where she had been. It was a man’s voice. From the group. There was no other explanation. They found her.

She tried to control her breathing as the light inspected from side to side, checking a couple of times. Luck wasn’t with her anymore, and the mud was quickly damping her pants, freezing. But she kept still. Even as another pair of dry, lighter footsteps joined their encounter, she didn’t dare to move a muscle.

“Maybe a rabbit?” said another voice, tired and done being there. She could tell it was younger.

“A deer maybe, but not a rabbit. They’re light.”

“Could it be someone?”

“Then we’d have to make sure they don’t mean a threat anymore.”

She didn’t like the sound of those words.

“You don’t think it could be the Delta, do you?”

Her chest tightened as she pressed back harder against the tree, as if that could help her hear better. She breathed in slow intervals, completely still.

Someone huffed, but it stopped abruptly. A sound that she knew too well came from the right, almost muffled. The movement was fast, but the man’s steps were making thuds against the ground. She didn’t know how she hadn’t heard him sooner. As she peeked from the side of a tree, she saw the silhouette of the tall man stab the skull of a walker that had been crawling near the river. The sick sound of the knife breaking into bone and the last scream of a ragged throat were over as soon as they started.

“Not them,” he said, significantly calmer than before. “Kinda disappointed it wasn’t a deer.”

Now they stopped suspecting that she was there. She only needed to keep it that way. They weren’t Delta, but they had _some _connection with them. She closed her eyes to concentrate. It was the closest she’d been to knowing where the community was, and she had to get a clue somehow.

But the next few seconds of eavesdropping didn’t get her anything. The subject was over. They didn’t mention a single fact about Delta’s location, not even implicit for her to find —naive of her to think that they _would_. Clementine ignored their discussion around their hope of finding a deer and what a waste of time it would be to keep searching, and until she didn’t hear at least fifteen steps getting away from her position, she didn’t move a muscle.

She headed towards the bridge and considered her path. It looked sturdy enough; the deck was withstanding the weight of an old pickup truck and it didn’t crack too loud to worry her as she stepped on the planks. She should be able to get across with no problem. However, she stopped by the first rail.

Her chances were small, and she couldn’t afford any mistake. Her leg making a misstep, a breath, a move that changed her shadow too fast or any other sound giving her away. But how else were they going to find _any_ information about Delta? They were the first people that weren’t Violet nor James that she had encountered in weeks. If they weren’t such a dangerous group, she would have thought this was a miracle and not god’s invitation to death.

The bridge was right in front of her. She could cross it, hope that James and AJ were already at the school and that Violet was safe, and go back to talk in an office about a plan with near to no progress. Or, she could sneak towards the group, in the rain, with her leg wasting days of healing, in hope to find any information about another allegedly immoral community. It wasn’t her first time doing the dirty work anyway, but was she ready to risk her life for a location?

She really hoped that Violet knew what she was doing for her.

She turned away from the bridge. Rain was falling heavy, disfiguring any track of footprints from the pair that could lead her to where they were. Which was, for herself, a good thing. She wasn’t too far, and knowing the general direction was enough.

Thanks to the growing storm and the flow of the river, she walked less conscious of her own sound, but still keeping a low profile. The forest was full of its own intricate sounds that, maybe in another situation, she would have found beautiful. Now they made her wary. She was in control of her movements, but not how the environment reacted to her. It was only a fact of fortune, one that she was really tempting.

It wasn’t long from the start of her walk when she started to hear the rest of the voices, and after that, the light from a fireplace becoming clearer. The smell of cooked meat, of something that wasn’t fish and rabbit, made her stomach turn. Soon enough, she found a spot in between large trees and the thin end of a bush.

She caught a couple chatting close to the fire, out of hearing reach. The other figure was standing in between the horses and looking away. If he had been just a step away, she wouldn’t have been able to recognize the shape of the man of earlier; broad shoulders and long hair tied back. Assuming by the thin line in the air, he was smoking. It felt suspiciously alone, but taking a better look to the place, she was pretty sure that there were more people inside the other tents. She could see the light of the other fires in between the trees, and the back of the tents looking at their direction. They were all close to each other, but not cramped. It sort of resembled The New Frontier’s camps. She knew how those worked.

The sound of fabric captured her attention. A woman exited one of the tents, in the process of zipping her jacket. She was still out of reach, so Clementine didn’t hear anything, but the interaction didn’t last long anyway. She left, going past the trees and tents. The light of her flashlight disappeared in twenty seconds.

That’s the way to the other camps.

And where she might find something useful.

Clementine moved back a couple of feet. The rain was growing stronger, enough to frustrate the two people the point where she could see the frown on their faces. She guessed that would be enough. Staying crouched hurt, and she could feel the wound pulsing every time she had to rely on the strength of her left leg. Still, she ignored it. Gaining enough space between the perimeter of the camp and herself, she headed left.

They had flashlights—or at least some kind of lamp—inside the tents. The light gave them away. The closest tent she could see had a faint glow, and movement from the shadows inside. In hopes to get something, Clementine walked as close as possible, placing herself just at the corner where the light from the fireplace didn’t hit.

“… maybe if you hadn’t shot that liberally, it’s just what I’m saying,” she heard when she got close enough.

“I ain’t letting anything get that close to me.” It was a feminine voice. Pissed, or just mildly annoyed. Not to the point of screaming. “You saw how many showed up. There’s no way my gun did that, nor anyone’s.”

“So you’re agreeing that it must have been a Whisperer.”

“Fucking impossible. They’re all to the West.” She huffed as in disbelief. “You know, horses are loud too. Reed would have never let us run around the zone like that.”

So they didn’t know the origin of the walkers. Hadn’t captured anyone. AJ and James were safe, possibly in the school by now since the group had settled down. She felt her own pulse relax.

Something moved close to her so she lowered to the ground. A figure appeared not so far, but not close enough to hear her either, alone and armed. They had patrols around the camp. It made sense. She couldn’t let her guard down now.

“He would have taken the same measures in our situation. Always the best for the group,” she heard the voice reply from inside. “We need to know if there’re some other communities that we don’t know of.”

And her breath hitched once again.

She only heard a low huff before deciding that it was enough. Checking to see where the patrol currently was, she walked away from the tent and headed forward. The rain concealed her steps well enough to avoid the patroller, but it also deafened her from anything she could not see. And she could not see past the mass of trees.

As the light from the next fireplace became clearer, the voices did too. People were sitting close to the fire, protected under a tarp—a considerable crowd next to the last camp. It was just heavy laughter and maybe casual conversation. Nothing that made this group stand out from the others in which she had been or seen. Again, she shielded herself behind a tent, in between the cedars and understory of the forest. There were at least six people outside, and just a few tents in the surrounding, so most of them should be empty. The little light that the fire granted to the rest of the forest gave her enough to notice the movement of a person patrolling on the end across from her, just before it disappeared in the distance.

Instead of immersing in whatever story they were sharing, she looked around. There were more horses by the other end, and carts, some empty and others loaded with supplies. They came heavily prepared. This wasn’t a simple excursion, but a mission, and this camp was only the result of an unpredictable situation. Clementine could only imagine what they were able to do with time and preparation.

She walked a little closer, about to give up in finding something useful, when she caught sight of a lone bag leaning close to the stake of a tent that kept it grounded. The tent that was right next to the group. They didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to that one corner in particular, but it wasn’t exactly out of view. Yet, it could have _something_. Maybe a map, or notes, or anything that could give her a clue of what was going with the communities. She had to find a way to get whatever information that she could get, and for now, that was her only idea.

Getting out of her current cover, she immediately noticed the small white dots falling and melting on her sleeve. The snow was starting and she had no cover. Time was a privilege, and she hadn’t been aware soon enough. She arrived behind the tent, with the voices loud, but not more than the heartbeat in her ears.

The backpack was a step and and arm away. She needed to be fast —her movement would cast shadows only when she approached the bag, but she didn’t know if right _then_ someone would look her way. She considered if it was really necessary, if she couldn’t just _wait_ for her fortune to give her someone that casually slipped a fact about Delta into the conversation.

Then she gave a stride forward, extended her whole arm and grabbed the handle.

Eliciting two barks.

She pulled hard and threw herself onto the floor.

“Hey! Boy!” shouted a feminine voice. Clementine didn’t feel anybody move, but then again, the only thing that she was aware of was how close she was to being killed. “He’s still going crazy when the fire cracks too loud. Chris told me he’d take care of that.”

She clutched the backpack against her own chest as she grew the courage to sneak a glance. They had dogs. Three dogs tied at the other side, a blindspot from where she had been inspecting the camp. She heard the calm but cheerful breathing as the woman, who she assumed took care of the dogs, approached to check if they were alright. Clementine had _not_ seen them. She tried to stop thinking about it.

No one spotted her. Good.

She slid away from the tent as fast and silent as she could and settled behind the dense bushes in between smaller trees. She didn’t care about getting her clothes wet and heavy anymore. Keeping a position that would allow her to flee, she opened the backpack.

A glass bottle was wrapped around an old shirt, which she took by the neck and unwrapped to find it half full of booze. The one next to it was rubbing alcohol. What she hoped to be a journal of some kind was a thin book of an author that she recognized from the pile Violet had lended her. But when she moved it, she found the flap of a pocket, and inside of it a folded piece of paper that she may have grabbed a little bit too hard. It didn’t matter.

There was no way to see what it said in the dark, so she moved over where some of the campfire light slipped through the foliage. A map. An old map that must have been teared off a guide or book. It portrayed all South Carolina, but the lines of a pen stressed certain sections of various rivers at different locations, with marks no more than an inch long, and circling the close proximity. She doubted that it was Delta, or even this group’s location, but she pressed it against her chest as if it were. In that place, raining and with the only light morphing and feet away, she wouldn’t be able to figure out anything.

Her clothes were way too wet to keep the paper intact, so she placed it inside the backpack again and adjusted it on her back. The idea of stealing hadn’t been too appealing at first. Yet, she couldn’t risk placing it back to where she found it. There were useful materials inside too (maybe not the booze), and she hadn’t even checked the rest of the pockets. Guilt was momentarily put aside.

The light from the last camp glowed faintly to her right, so she headed there; not just because she wanted to be sure that she didn’t miss anything, but because she couldn’t go back from where she came from. The wooden bridge was a miracle that she wasted, so she had to go back to her first plan.

She sneaked past a patroller with fair ease before getting close to the last camp. It had less tents, kind of like the first one, and only one person outside. She heard absolute quiet. There weren’t any lights coming from the tents closer to her, and while not trusting too much, she assumed that most of them were sleeping in this sector. Or going to. The only person standing there looked impatient, waiting just by the entrance of a tent that only had a faint light, tapping the floor lightly with his foot and crossing arms, but Clementine noticed that he was holding a short axe by its shoulder.

Next thing she knew, the tent had opened and the axe holder turned away from her to face whoever was inside. Clementine dared to adventure closer, but still behind cover. The guy was a little taller than her, but thin, as she could even notice that through his jacket. It worried her that her first though was that she would be able to take him down.

“… for branches or fallen. Yes. I know. It’ll be quick.” He spoke loud enough. It didn’t take her much to recognize him as the guy who confused her for a rabbit, her first encounter. “I’m carrying them straight to the second fire and sending Erryn over here though, is that okay?”

After that, the tent closed and the guy lit his path with a flashlight. Clementine watched him go into the forest.

An idea flickered on the corner of her head but she forced it to fade. She was injured. The condition of her leg significantly worsened in contrast of the last few days; it wasn’t even meant to stand her whole body weight yet and the walkers already forced Clementine to go through parts of the forest that she didn’t even know. There was a whole group of people, fully armored and capable, in wait of something going wrong to fix it. In this case, it was her.

But it persisted, and stayed, because that map didn’t have what they needed. Because, after all the people and tents she had crossed, there was no information about the whereabouts of Delta that she could use for their advantage. Only a stolen backpack and the knowledge that this group was, in fact, dangerous and ready to take other communities that they are not aware of. The only thing that her infiltration into the group awarded them.

She measured her chances, then moved forward.

She didn’t get closer that ten feet, never abandoning the shelter of bushes and perennial trees. She was cold. Everything was cold. From her damp clothes to the blade of the knife that she just drew. The only reason her teeth weren’t crackling was because she was used to situations that required quiet. The boy didn’t notice her even as they grew more distant from the campsite, axing some branches on the way, completely oblivious of Clementine watching him like a vulture. She could throw a rock on the other side to startle him, but that would make him vigilant. Maybe wait for a walker to show up and use it as distraction, but they don’t show up as much in the woods, and it was even less unlikely now that James moved them. Her clearest shot was to wait and then stealth her way to his back.

When the light from the fireplace faded out of sight, he stopped next to a fallen tree with branches that were the right size to keep a fire and to be cut with his axe, dropped the basket near and placed the flashlight pointing at him. She watched him closer. The most important thing that she noted was a holster with a gun on his side, and with no doubt he carried some kind of knife hidden somewhere. She knew what to do.

Without flinching, she was out of her hiding spot with her knife pointed at the neck of someone she didn’t know.

“Drop the axe.”

It fell on the ground, the thud muted by some dry pine needles on the floor. Clementine pressed the knife closer to his neck and took the gun from his side. He noticed, and tensed. His hands were quickly in the air.

She pushed his shoulder forward with everything she had and tripped him with her good leg. This time, she grunted. But it was necessary. It was much easier to keep and eye on him if he stayed on the floor.

He fell with a cry of pain. Immediately, she took off the safety lock and pointed the glock at him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “But if you shout, I shoot.” He didn’t say anything, which she took as a good thing. Clementine grabbed the axe, and threw it as far as she could. “On your knees.”

Her voice didn’t quiver. If he decided to charge at her, and she failed the shot, he would be able to subdue her without much battle. But she couldn’t show that. It had been a while since the last time she had to be the bad guy, and she didn’t enjoy it. It started to scare her how easy it was to change. To use intimidation not even as a last resort. To kill, sometimes.

“I knew it,” he said, grumbling like a child, but almost in disgust. “I fucking knew there was no way Delta didn’t know about us. The plan was too broad.”

“I’m not Delta,” she clarified. “Didn’t I tell you to get on your knees?”

He looked surprised, but complied. She saw him struggle getting up. He had a gaunt, long face, and bushy eyebrows. He looked to be around James’ age, if not a little bit older. Now that she was in front of him, she could see better his long, curly hair, but not long enough to cover his mangled ear. It looked as if half had been slashed with a knife.

“You already know the deal. You move, or scream, or do anything to compromise me, and I shoot.” She kept her voice low, but not inaudible. “I need some answers, and you’re giving them to me. Are you the group who’s fighting Delta?”

He looked at her, and opened his mouth only to close it. Clementine knew what was going on. He avoided her gaze.

“And?” Nothing. “If they told you that keeping your mouth shut would save your life in case this happened, then they were wrong. I will make you talk, and I don’t fear shooting a gun.”

He huffed. “You won’t. If you do, everyone will hear. Then that’s it for _you_.”

“I already walked around your whole camp without being seen. I know how many of you are, what you have. I know my way around these woods better than any of you ever will. You even confused me for a rabbit back there.” She saw the change on his expression, the small widening of eyes. “If you think I wouldn’t be able to run away after shooting you, then there’s one way to prove it, but you’re not gonna like it.” Her hands were getting sweaty. She had one shot. One. “Let me rephrase this only one more time. Are you really determined to die for nothing?”

Her hands were going to start trembling at any moment. That’s why, seeing the change on the guy’s face, she felt the whole weight of her lies lift from her shoulders.

He didn’t look at her. “We’re Greensboro. And yes.”

“Good.” She looked both sides quickly. Nobody there. “Where’s Delta?”

He looked at her like she had said the most ridiculous thing, but held it back. “At the coast. Most part of Charleston.”

That was it. That was everything they needed to know. Charleston. Coast. That was in South Carolina. The plan had a goal, a _where_, the main factor they needed to form it. Now, it was all thinking in the office, waiting and acting.

But she had already gone so far.

“What do you know about them?” she asked. Her mind kept repeating Charleston. Coast. Charleston. Coast.

“That they’re a tyrannical group that takes over other communities.”

She nodded. “If they’re all the way over there, what are you doing here?”

“In no way I’m telling you about—”

“Well, you’re gonna have to.” Adjusting the aim of the gun did the job of shutting him up.

“They don’t tell us the whole thing,” he said. His voice was quivering slightly, and she felt sorry. Sorry did not mean hesitation. “Water is Delta’s principal source of goods, so we’re following the rivers. Stopping their means of transportation is the best way to put us in advantage.”

Rivers. _The map._

Charleston. Coast.

She couldn’t risk wasting too much time.

“Why do you need to know all this anyway?” the guy asked.

He was brave. Asking questions in front of a gun. Maybe crazy. Lucky that Clem wasn’t a blood-thirsty maniac.

“They took something. I need it back.”

A beat of pause.

“Then why don’t you come with us?” he dared to say. His eyes were prying into hers, but in no moment Clementine felt like she was at the end of another gun. If anything, she could almost see him… equally as lost as her. “They aren’t too harsh unless they have to be. We’re against the same enemy.”

James had said that, in the war, both communities were equally as terrible. She wasn’t going to start questioning his word now.

“We’re better off alone than with a group like yours.”

In a heartbeat, his eyes fell harder on hers, and she knew that she had somehow fucked up.

“_We?_”

That was enough.

She grabbed the glock with both hands and stopped resting her weight in only her right leg. It was torture.

“You’re going to get up with your hands in the air and walk ten steps the same directionto where you came from. You’re waiting two minutes before you even dare to move, and I’m disappearing. I won’t ever see you again,” she commanded, in the most poised tone she could achieve. “Understood?”

He nodded, but Clementine waved the gun again. “Yes.”

She walked a step backwards. The guy put both hands in the air, his stare back down. He put one foot on the ground, and barely covered his stumble. Took a deep breath, way too deep, and Clementine saw the rise on his chest shivering. He grunted getting up, and his leg, almost as slim as the wood he was recollecting, tried to keep the weight of his body.

She didn’t know what happened in the next five seconds. In the blink of an eye she saw a body charging at her, and in the next, blood splattered on her clothes from the gunshot. The body fell on her, and she threw it aside like it was a walker. The gurgling sounds that came next were nothing she hadn’t heard before. They meant that she aimed for the neck. And she was right. When she looked at the side, he was still clutching at the edges of life, his hands overflowing with his own blood, hopping to fix something that not even a thousand stitches could. His eyes were pleading, or that’s what she thought, because the feeling that Clem could see the most was only confusion. In her last strings of humanity, Clementine pulled out her knife and finished him before giving herself the chance to think twice. She fell on her knees next to him, breathing way heavier than she should.

His shirt had risen slightly when he was on the floor. Clementine saw dried blood in his abdomen, and when she lifted it further, bandages.

He was _hurt_. He wasn’t going to attack her, he was just in pain. And she killed him. She did it again.

The realization came to her like a brick to the face, and she could barely move before puking on the ground next to the body.

She killed him. She didn’t even notice when the trigger gave on her finger, and just like that, he was dead. She lost control. That’s the first time since she got AJ back.

_The gun._

Before the possible consequences finished processing in her head, she heard heavy but fast footsteps. The flashlight blinded her, but she knew the man. And she knew that he wasn’t the only one coming to get her. She killed the boy, now was her turn.

She was already too busy running off to hear what the man yelled. The taste of vomit in her mouth and the smell of blood on her clothes were fresh on her senses. She was limping, and the bullets sprayed from the shotgun of her chaser were dangerously close to getting her other leg useless. There were other voices. The entire camp. People talking way too loud and, soon after, dogs. She didn’t think she could be able to dodge trees that fast. She killed a boy, an innocent boy, and now they were coming at her. Maybe she deserved it.

River. The river was close to her, she could hear the stream. Her only chance was the bridge, and she had lost it. She didn’t even know how far the track was, but even that would get her killed more easily. The woods were hard for running, too many trees, saplings and bushes. The ground was unreliable; every step she took was blinded, completely at the mercy of nature to not let her trip into an unsurmountable terrain. But it was everything she had. She could not hide, climbing was impossible with her leg, and fighting back, suicide. So she ran.

Then slipped.

Then lost control.

A puddle of mud twisted her foot and she rolled down hill for eternity. Her arms covered her head efficiently, yet left the rest of her body defenseless, crashing with the ground and piercing rocks that only luck stopped her from breaking any bones. The fall was graceless. Only her body against the ground and then dead silence. Everything seemed to stop. She opened her eyes only to find the trees in middle of darkness, dancing around just like they did in the car crash weeks ago, so she closed them. She stayed on fetal position for the most agonizing wait of her life. Waiting to be found, to be recognized and killed. She wondered if AJ was okay at the school, and maybe if it wouldn’t bother him if her eyes stayed closed for a little too long.

When the voices became louder and lights searched from between the bushes above, she opened her eyes, but stayed still. Her instinct was to reach for her knife, but then realized that the gun was still in her hands. She gripped it firmer. She tensed when the gunshots resonated through the forest, and it remained even when she realized that they were shutting off the moaning of a few walkers. Not close to her. Maybe. She couldn’t tell. Eventually, the noise stopped.

Then nothing happened. She counted to ten, which became twenty, fifty, a hundred, and repeat. Nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat and the sky falling to pieces.

They were gone.

Snowflakes started to fall on the ground next to her face, and she focused on watching them pile up and nothing else. Her nose blocked even more, making it harder to breathe. She was soaking, heavy and cold. Dirt replaced the acidic taste of vomit. If a walker ever decided to attack her, this would have been the perfect moment.

She cleaned her face with her hands only to withdraw them covered in mud. The earthy smell covered the stink of fresh blood, but wasn’t strong enough to erase it from her head. In between the dirt on her face she found fresh tears from the tension. She touched the hat on her head. It was still there. Clementine laughed, and she was glad that nobody else was there to ask _why_, since she genuinely wouldn’t have been able to identify the reason behind it. With the help of the nearest tree she managed to get up. She spit onto the floor something that looked like it belonged inside an animal’s digestive track. Her head and heart were still pounding, but she needed to continue forward. She needed to find a pathway to leave.

She couldn’t distinguish where she was. The vegetation, the sky, the ground. They all looked the same as they had an hour ago. If she stayed still, she was sure that it wouldn’t take long for the earth to reclaim her. The adrenaline wore off before she even started walking god knows how long ago, allowing her to feel every inch of her body falling to the exhaustion, but she wasn’t giving up.

A dog barked.

She did not recognize the movement by her right in time. She gripped the gun. The bark repeated. Close. There weren’t any flashlights this time and that made this impossibly worse. She was too tired. Her hands were trembling, making it hard to aim the glock properly. This was it.

_Shit. Shit. Shit._

“Clementine?”

The gun fell suddenly to the ground.

From between the thicket and trees that seemed to go for years, she saw a pale, thin figure followed by a dog that she knew would cause no harm. But she didn’t need any of it to recognize Violet’s voice. An instant wave of relief shocked her whole body.

Rosie was with her. She already found AJ and James. They were safe.

The exhaustion finally brought her down, but in no time she found herself supported in Violet’s arms.

_Wait, she hadn’t forgotten, had she?_

“Delta,” Clementine exhaled, looking at Violet’s eye and grasping her forearms like they were the only thing keeping her alive. “It’s part of a city. On the coast—”

“Clem.”

She had started to repeat what she memorized, as if it would vanish if she saved it for later. “Charleston. Following the rivers, like we—”

“Clem.” She stopped. She didn’t overlook the shock on Violet’s face, but just as it appeared it was brushed off. “Stop. It doesn’t matter.”

Violet pulled away only a bit. “AJ and James found their way to the school and told me what happened. I thought I would find you there too, and we waited but got worried and then… What happened to you?”

Her eyebrows were slightly turned up, and she suddenly felt conscious of the complete mess of a shape she was in. Violet’s gaze wandered around her clothes, her leg, her body, and finally, her face. It remained there.

Clementine was abruptly out of breath, with tears in her eyes.

“I killed him.”

She didn’t want to look at Violet’s face.

“You killed—? Who?”

“I killed him. I killed a guy. He was hurt. I did it again.”

In no way that was all she meant to say, but it was all she could.

She didn’t have to look at her face to see the consternation. She felt it in the silence, in her hold, getting looser. She expected questions, yelling, and total panic. To be reminded again of the things she had done, of the kind of person she was.

But she got none of that. Instead, Violet threw herself on the ground with her and pulled Clementine into an embrace that drew silent tears from her eyes. She heard Rosie whining somewhere near, but her eyes were closed shut, and she was too concentrated on regulating her breathing to notice anything else.

“I don’t care what you did. It doesn’t matter,” Violet said, close to her ear. She was skinny and bony. Not too strong. Cold most of the time. Clementine leaned closer. The weight was slowly lifting off her. “You’re okay.”

She wanted to scream. To get up and tell her how much she should care, and that it _did_ matter. Tell her everything she had already done and would happen again if she lost control of herself. Of the boy’s face, of his gurgling sounds as he struggled to stop the bleeding from his neck, his eyes directed at hers. How she didn’t even remember when she pressed the trigger.

But she did none of that. Instead, she hugged back and let her chest be completely embraced by the warm feeling that her arms brought. She allowed herself to be held, trying her best to match her breathing to Violet’s. She didn’t even notice when it became easier to follow her rhythm.

After all, Violet was right. She was okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to ao3 after yours truly got lost in the woods walking around his grandparents’ house, except that not in constant danger of being killed by a small army.
> 
> i SWEAR the next chapter has some Fluff. some Bonding. Something that isn't a complete mess.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how are yall doing in quarantine i’m everyday striding further away from sanity.

The walk back to the school was humiliating, to say the least. She relied on Violet for support and orientation, propping her arm over her shoulders. She leaded all the way back, leaving the rest of the adrenaline that kept her going at the other side of the bridge, and from then the path was seemingly easy. It was awfully quiet, but Clementine didn’t think she had enough energy to talk. She tried not to think too much about Violet sneaking glances at the blood on her clothes.

AJ hugged her like they hadn’t seen in ages. After reassuring him that she was fine multiple times, he immediately tried telling her everything that happened, and when she usually would have been able to follow his rambling, now every word was a mile away. James calmed him down, promising that they all would talk later.

Now that she completely collapsed on a chair, the pain became ten times worse. James gave her a worrying glance.

“We should all wash up after today,” Violet said, already on her way to heat up water, not open to objections. Not that Clementine would. “You go first, then we’ll look at your leg.”

She hadn’t had a proper shower in forever, and with that winter settled, the probability of having one had looked even further away.

They told Clementine to wait in the bathroom. She found it surprisingly clean. It was an individual bathroom from what used to be the principal’s part of the main building, with an unusable sink, a toilet, and a bathtub. It was the closest bathtub they had and _could_ use, so it was kept as pristine as possible, and only used when they didn’t have any other options. Like now. A shower would have been more effective, yes, but they couldn’t lose that much water.

She left her boots and jacket outside, completely covered with filth. The toilet seat cracked slightly and shifted below her weight. She took the gun. It felt uncharacteristically heavy. There were some spots of blood that she tried to remove with spit. It was a 9 mm, like most that people carried around, and it still had seven bullets in the magazine, which she would have considered a miracle hadn’t been for the situation.

When she heard steps coming from the hall, she put it back into the backpack.

James appeared first, with two buckets of water. Violet carried only one, that she left at the corner, but while James poured his two into the bathtub, she offered clothes and a towel.

“These should be your size. You can wash your clothes tomorrow, just leave them to soak overnight,” she said. Clementine whispered a quiet “thank you”. The towel looked clean, cleaner than anything she had seen in a long time.

“Don’t touch the wrappings,” James chimed in, with the buckets pilled and already waiting on the threshold. “It’s better if you leave your leg as it is. For now.”

She nodded.

She wanted to thank them. To ask why they were doing all of this. To ask if they even knew what everything meant to her, offering their aid and giving both her and AJ things that they never even had. But nothing came out of her mouth.

“Take your time,” Violet said, before leaving her alone.

Groaning just slightly, she stood. She moved the candle to the edge of the sink, and when she looked up, she saw herself in the mirror. Her hat had new stains of blood. Seeing her reflection like that wasn’t like seeing it on water, like when she washed her face in Ericson’s entrance. It felt deeper, clearer, like it was expecting something of her, something different than anything she could offer. It made her feel worthless, somehow. A mirror. Such an insignificant object was now enough to make her weak.

She moved away from it, closer to the tub. The last thing she wanted was to watch her body after taking off her clothes.

The two buckets were enough to fill about an inch past her ankles. It was warm, but the skin that didn’t touch the water felt a thousand times colder than before—which was most of her body. With a cup, she poured the water over her head while combing her hair with her fingers. When was the last time she washed her head properly? It was all greasy, and dirty, and tangled to the point of frustration. She grabbed the bar of soap from the rim—old, dry and with black cracks. The dirt and mud (and blood) that was caked on her skin fell with ease. She wished her mind could be scrubbed as easily.

Watching all the dirt go away and how her hair just felt smoother was odd. She didn’t have a lot of memories from before the walkers nine years ago, and most of what she knew came from old books or people who’ve lived long enough to remember the transition in a more traumatizing way; but she did remember going to school and showering in the mornings. Her mother, only a blur in her mind, helping her dry, and dress, and repeating the process almost everyday. The memory of clean, warm water. Now, it was all about finding a creek, a lake. A small enough place with water that would allow them to clean only some parts of themselves while remaining alert for anything. In the summer, she would give herself the chance to wash completely in a river with briefs and a dirty shirt on. Winters were a different story. They were lucky if they even got to wash their hands and faces. Being one day able to strip naked and just feel _clean_ for once wasn’t a thing she considered on the road. In the school, the water was even _warm_.

She should feel happy.

She _had_ to be.

She really tried not to think about it, she really did, but she was alone, in silence, and naked. Which was exactly how it felt killing that boy. Exposed. Showing who she really was, instead of what she feigned to, what she wanted to. A person who didn’t think, who acted on impulse disregarding others, how other would suffer from her actions. Was someone like that even deserving to be called a person? Sometimes she thought that the only thing that set her apart from a walker was her conscience.

The water was already cold when she let it down the drain. She used what was left from the last bucket with the cup, first to rinse out her hair, then the rest of her body. It wasn’t freezing, but neither warm, and she couldn’t control the shivering of her body anymore. At least the cold water soothed the pain, although it wouldn’t stop the giant bruise on her shoulder to keep on growing. She tried her best to avoid getting her bandages wet, letting the water flow around it.

The pants were only a size too big but still clinging to her hips. The shirt was loose too, with some holes here and there, but the Ericson jacket covered her enough. It wasn’t nearly as warm as her own layer of clothes, or practical, but more than she could thank for. Her feet were still burning from the walk and runs, even more broken than before; the cold ceramic tiles were absurdly pleasing.

James was waiting for her in the room with AJ and Rosie; Violet went to wash up to not lose much time. It wasn’t like James needed too much help anyway.

When he unwrapped the bandages on her leg, he grimaced.

“Is it too bad?” She was sitting on the bed, but James’ hand blocked the view.

She hadn’t noticed how bad it burned until now.

“It opened up only a little. Here, at the end,” he answered. The wound was back to red, angry red, turning purple in some sections. The blood was already dry, but the dirty bandage told her that it wasn’t an insignificant amount. Of course it burned. “It should be fine, but it’s dirty.”

“How—?”

“It isn’t too hard for dirt to slip in, specially if you’re sweating,” he clarified. “I mean, when you got back, you were completely covered in…”

When his thinking became a fraction too long, AJ completed for him. “Shit?”

“AJ.” Clementine shot him a glare.

“I was looking for filth or mud, but yes.” Clementine sighed. AJ chuckled in delight for being validated. “We just need to clean that up.”

She knew the drill. Let water run through, use the rag to clean around. It hurt. It hurt like a bitch, so she let her head fall back, dampening the pillow, and bit her knuckles. The cold water at least alleviated the hell that was going on from her knee down. The wrapping process was less painful.

“Thank you,” Clem said, breaking the silence that fell when James started to clean the medical supplies. “I still don’t know why you do all this for us, for me, but I deeply appreciate it. I don’t know how to make it back to you.”

“You don’t have to,” he said, and when Clementine looked at him, he avoided her eyes. “You really don’t. I—” He cut himself as if there was something stuck on his throat. Clementine’s eyes shook in realization. “It’s my responsibility. It’s my fault that you’re—”

Now she cut him off, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I know,” she said, and continued at James’ face. “I figured out when we got here, but it doesn’t matter. You may be one of the last people in the world who wouldn’t have left us to die.”

He looked confused at first, then he smiled. His smiles were small; calm and passive, like leaves falling off a tree.

“It’s the least I could do. You never owed me anything,” he said. “You’re good people. I knew that from the moment you got here. That’s all I need to know that it’s worth it.” While she wanted that to make her feel better, it was more like a shovel digging her dipper into the hole. She didn’t have much time to think about it, however, when James expression shifted. “Violet told me what happened, when she found you.”

Clementine felt her stomach drop. “What did she tell you?”

“That you found out where Delta is.”

Thank _god_ that was it.

“Wait, that’s where Violet’s friends are,” said AJ. “Is it close? How did you find out?”

“Not too close, on the coast. And I found the camp of the group they’re going against, Greensboro, so I had to sneak in.” Clementine turned her attention to James. “That’s why you sent the walkers. They were getting too close to the school, right?”

He locked genuinely shocked. “It’s _them_? How much did you get?_”_

“Bits and pieces. Enough. We should all discuss this when we can.”

“Tomorrow. You’re tired.” He wasn’t wrong, but she doubted that she would be able to sleep that night. After a beat, his eyes softened, as if he didn’t know what to say. “Why did you go to them?”

“What?”

“To the camp. Your leg wasn’t even in the condition to run yet, and you snuck around?”

“I had to. We didn’t have any information about the whereabouts of Delta for weeks, only guesses, and we can’t work with just that. I heard them mentioning something about Delta and I just knew we weren’t going to get another opportunity like this.”

AJ sit to her side now, and Clementine tried to ignore how worried he looked. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

James opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but closed it. He started to talk again but Clem knew that it wasn’t what he originally was going to say. “They saw you?”

She took a few seconds to respond. “Yes. They had dogs. I ran. Then I fell downhill and lost them, walked what I could before Violet found me.”

“I’m glad that she went to look out for you.” He smiled and stood up from the chair. Rosie followed him up to the door, where he looked back at her. “Violet told you to stay with AJ. Be a good girl.” He snapped his fingers towards the inside of the room and AJ beamed when Rosie trotted to him. “I’ll leave you to rest. I’ll be first lookout tonight, then Vi.”

“Lookout?” asked AJ.

“I’m familiar with how Greensboro works,” he answered. “They saw Clementine, so we’ll have to be careful from now on.”

_We need to know if there’re some other communities that we don’t know of._

_We’d have to make sure they don’t mean a threat anymore._

She needed to talk to Violet about that.

“Are they going to find us?” AJ asked again. He tried to sound calm but Clementine noticed the tension on his hold.

“I don’t think so.” She smiled reassuringly, and it seemed to work. “They were on the other side of the river when I saw them, and they lost sight of me far from the bridge.”

“Besides, the school is almost impossible to find,” added James. “The signs were taken down and most tracks lead to nowhere unless you know the place well. Violet’s friends took care of that years ago.”

So even if she had ran away from Greensboro _unharmed_, finding the way back to the school would have been near impossible. She had homework to do.

James walked out. He left the pot of water on top of the drawer along with some extra gauze and cloth to treat her minor wounds. They weren’t many, just scraps on her hands and some on her face that she failed to evade. The worst looking one was in the space between her neck and shoulder—that she _really_ felt when she was washing her hair—but it was only discomfort. She gulped down half a painkiller and just covered it out with gauze.

Cutting a piece of tape, she heard the happy noises from Rosie as AJ pet her heavily and threw the ball again.

She smiled, looking at him from the corner of her eyes. “You like Rosie, huh?”

“Yeah! She’s smart. Her breath smells but she licks my hand when I pet her ears.”

Clem suppressed a laugh. “That means she likes you too.”

“Do you like her?” he asked back. “You’re… careful with her.”

She took a second to answer. “I _am_ careful around dogs, but she’s nice. It’s good you’re getting along.”

When he threw the tennis ball again to the wall, she saw AJ’s mouth tighten again with a smaller smile, and a crease forming between his eyebrows. It was a minuscule change, but she saw right through it.

“Is there something wrong?”

He looked at the floor. “It’s just… I was worried.”

Clem’s shoulder dropped and she looked at him. “Oh, AJ.”

“I wasn’t scared!” he defended himself. “I wanted to go look for you but Violet told me to stay here.”

“You know, it’s okay to be scared.” She ruffled his hair. “I’ve told you, I’m always coming back to you, no matter what happens.”

Usually he would smile, laugh or make a teasing comment, but now there was none of that.

“But what if you don’t?” Clementine stopped fixing the gauze and looked straight at him. “I’ve heard you talk about the other places, like the one we found today. They are dangerous, you said so. And you’re even more hurt now. What if next time it’s worse?”

She really didn’t want to have that conversation, not right now. Maybe never.

“I won’t let that happen.”

“You don’t know that!”

Frustration. She knew that face. The pursed lips, heavy glance. How his voice emphasized one part of a sentence. She sighed, and stopped trying to be evasive.

“Then you’d know what to do, right?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.” She didn’t raise her voice or even change her tone, but it still made her feel bad. “Do you trust James?”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust Violet?”

“Yes.”

“Then, if something bad ever happens to me, you’re not alone. It’s not like on the road.” she said.

“So we’re staying here?”

He changed the topic, but Clementine did not know if what he was asking now was better.

She remembered her talk with Violet on the stream, before getting lost. She had a mission, and she was determined to do it, so much that Clem started to get involved. In all technical terms, the school was ideal. Placed in middle of the woods surrounded by solid walls and an auto-sufficient system, if treated well. And being with James and Violet was… nice. But she _couldn’t _get attached, which made her feel like shit. It was as if she was treating people as disposable, as secondary. Yet, eventually they had to go. Finding a place for AJ to be safe and _live_ for once was her priority, and she wasn’t going to find that in the middle of crossfire. Nothing was changing her original plan.

“For now.” She limited her answer. Not a lie.

“Okay.” He didn’t seem completely satisfied, but he went to sit on his bed anyway. He wasn’t mad, but like he was… thinking. Rosie rested her head on his lap. “Can I have one of those books that Violet… borrowed?”

“Lend. _I_ borrowed the books. _She_ lended them to me.” She heard him whispering the correction. “And what? Got bored of yours? You need to practice your reading with language of your age.”

He groaned, she had to suppress a laugh. “I am old enough for those! These are short, and boring.”

“Can you even understand them?”

“Yes.” Then he lowered his voice. “Most of it.”

He kept looking at her with expecting eyes, so she sighed again.

“They’re on the shelf.” He immediately ran towards the wall where they were. “But I’m choosing.”

Without complaining, he ran to her side. She selected one that were appropriate enough and watched him jump to his bed, moving a candle to give him a better look. He checked it and started to read out loud, but quiet. Rosie jumped on the bed and rested at his feet, as if she were listening. Clem had to admit that the dog was cute, overlooking her intimidating build.

Meanwhile, Clementine brought closer the other candle and pulled the backpack over the bed. She still had to look through its contents.

AJ stared when he felt the movement next to him.

“Did you steal that backpack?”

She physically cringed.

“I thought I would find something about Delta in here to take and then put it back,” she said, a mere excuse for herself. “I didn’t get enough time.”

AJ shrugged. “That’s okay, then.”

She didn’t respond. How was she supposed to teach him that there were things that you shouldn’t do in certain situations, but that weren’t totally off the table in others? Exceptions to a rule wasn’t something that AJ really understood yet.

She put that aside and checked the backpack. It was a nice one. Good size and in good condition, with the exception of a few patches here and there but nothing too significant. A bandana wrapped around a strap. She was pleased with her own though.

She took the map first and put it on the counter with the book as a weight, and started to draw the rest. She had already seen the rubbing alcohol and the glass bottle; it had broken a little at the mouth, letting some drops stink the cloth, but not too much. There were clean bandages on the corner right next to a blister pack with painkillers that she cherished with her life. She found a case that guarded a pair of glasses with almost no magnification, and she had a faint memory of Sarah. Some bobby pins were scattered at the bottom, left forgotten. But by far the most important thing in the main compartment was a knife.

It was a nice stiletto knife in a leather sheath. The blade looked to be recently sharpened and it barely had any chips. It was small, from the tip of her middle finger to her wrist. A perfect pocket knife. But wouldn’t change it for hers, much sturdier and versatile. She thought about it.

“Hey, goofball.” He groaned at the name but turned to look at her. “Come here for a second.”

She handed him the knife when he got to her side.

“What do you think about this one?”

He inspected it for a second, clenching his hand around the handle and moving it only a bit like he knew what he was doing. His hands were small, the size of her palm, but he had a firm grip. And the knife looked secure enough when he held it. At least better than with hers.

“It’s nice,” he said. “I can hold it. It lighter than yours. But it doesn’t have the pointy things that yours have.”

“Has. And the serrations? You won’t need them,” she said. “Do you want it?”

He knew that she was going to ask that, but still beamed.

Clementine had been considering getting him a knife for a while, but it was hard finding a place that wasn’t completely raided. And he hadn’t actually _needed_ one before, always had hers when he wanted to do something, always under her supervision.

But the talk they had just now…

“With a condition,” she started, before he got overly excited. Her serious demeanor must’ve gotten to him, because he immediately knew that he had to listen. “You won’t use it unless strictly necessary. You’ll keep it in your back pocket, and you can use it here, inside the school, but if we go out and something happens you’ll stick to your gun. I don’t wanna see you in middle of a group of walkers if I can keep you far from it. Remember what I always tell you?”

“To be your eyes.”

“That’s right. I can’t do this without you.” She couldn’t do _anything_ without him. “Understood?”

He nodded eagerly. “Yes.”

She over hardened her eyes and then smiled. She poked his stomach with her finger, eliciting a laugh, and then another one, and kept going until she noticed that she was laughing too.

“Now go back to your side,” she pushed him towards his bed. “And keep reading to Rosie. You’re doing better.”

He did, so she went back to inspect the rest. She opened the front compartment and, just as she was inspecting a compass, there was a knock on the door and Violet stepped inside.

“Hi, Violet.” AJ smiled, and she didn’t hesitate to smile back. “Is it my turn?”

“Tomorrow, buddy. We’ll get more water after the storm,” she answered, then looked at Clem. “Hey.”

There was something different. She changed her clothes, only keeping the denim vest, and her hair was just starting to dry. But it wasn’t that. Maybe it was the way she approached, careful; or the difference between the smile for AJ and the one reserved for her, subtle but also so evident in her eyes. She didn’t know what it was, but it made her feel lighter. It made her remember when she found her in the woods, but for a reason, the bad parts of that memory were pushed back.

Violet arched an eyebrow and walked towards her, scratching Rosie’s ears on the way. “What are you doing?”

“Going through the stuff I found.”

Violet looked around, then grabbed the bottle from the top of the drawer. Clem kept looking inside.

“Gin?” Violet inquired.

Clem chuckled. “What? You want some?”

“Not really a drinker, no.” She settled it down, just looking around at the other things Clem scattered on the bed. “But if you ask James, I’m sure he wouldn’t oppose to get drunk with you any day.”

“Sounds great, but pass. I’m trying to avoid tripping on things as much as I can.” She heard Violet snicker, as she also grabbed the case with the glasses. “We can use it to light a fire too, if we get in a difficult situation. Do you want this lighter? It still has gas.”

She tossed it to Violet. “Thanks.”

On that compartment, besides the compass and lighter, was only a pocket mirror and a rusty nail clipper.

“What are you going to do with all these things?” asked Violet.

“I got a knife!”

“That’s a nice knife, little man. Be careful with it.”

Clementine shrugged, back at Violet’s question. “There isn’t that much, but it’s useful. The painkillers are mine if nobody else needs them. Do you want the backpack? Mine’s fine.”

“I’m pretty sure James would appreciate it, but thanks for the lighter.”

The front pocket didn’t have space for much except a single wooden box. It was the size of her palm. The inside was covered in red velvet, with only one corner starting to peel.

“A rosary ring? A chaplet?” Violet squinted her eyes for a second.

“You’re religious?” She looked over them and passed the box to Violet, who withdrew them instead.

“My family was incredibly Catholic. The go to church every Sunday and tithing every month kind of people, even when we barely had anything,” she answered. “My grandparents’ had old ass rings like this one when they married. My Grandma gave me his, I still have it.”

“That’s cute.” Violet smiled back at her, but it hesitated at the end. “And you?”

“Mhm?”

“Are you still religious?”

There was a beat of silence. “It’s complicated, I guess.” She put the items back in the box. “You?”

“Not really.”

“Fair. It’s hard to believe in God after… all this shit.”

Watching Violet look at the box made the hole deeper in her chest. As if she didn’t have enough reasons to feel bad already. That was someone’s. A person’s belongings. The book had a bookmark almost at the end, an old piece of newspaper poking out from between the pages. Taking the mirror on her hand almost felt intimate, and she closed it as soon as she discovered what it was. It reminded her of her young self, of losing AJ and herself with him. She didn’t want to remember it. Yes, she always took from who she thought was fair, but had it always been? Her constant bad decisions made her question her own judgement; and while her judgement was what had kept her alive for so long, it was also the worst of her weights. She stole a person’s belongings and had also dared to take a life?

Clementine frowned to herself. It wasn’t the time to think about it. She tried to focus on the bright side, in finding one, before remembering something. She took the map from under the book and gave it to Violet, who immediately pulled the candle closer.

“What’s this?”

“The reason I got the backpack,” she said. “Greensboro’s future bases. Delta’s resources come mainly from the water, so if they take over the rivers, they think it would be a great opportunity to attack them. Delta is in—”

“Charleston, yes, I remember.” Violet didn’t take her eyes off the map, as if she was trying to memorize it. Then, she sighed, running her fingers through her hair. “We should all discuss this tomorrow.”

“That’s what James said.”

“Because it’s been a long day. Especially for you.” It was true, but that didn’t mean that she was going to be able to fall asleep.

It also made her feel guilty, in a way.

She watched Violet, looking at the map in silence and leaning slightly against the drawer.

“What did you really come here for?” Violet arched an eyebrow at that. She didn’t intend it to sound so aggressive, so she continued. “I mean, I like your company, but you didn’t come to see the backpack.”

“Um.” She looked to the other side, as if she was embarrassed. Clem smiled, although it was more of a smirk. “I just wanted to see how your leg was doing. And… you? I guess. After everything.”

Oh, yeah. Her leg and all the events that triggered and followed her collapse in the forest.

“I’m doing fine. Thank you.”

Her leg was burning like hell and she almost had a breakdown taking a shower. Violet looked at her like she knew that and didn’t believe her words at all, but didn’t inquire further.

“Good to know, then.” She moved from the drawer and started walking towards the door. “You know to call me if anything happens. I’m going to the music room.”

“Can I go with you?” She couldn’t stop herself before asking.

Violet raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, always.”

Clementine moved the things on the bed back to the backpack and stood to get the crutches.

“AJ, keep an eye on Rosie, will you?” Violet told him with a smile.

He nodded, but then settled his attention on Clem. “Are you coming back? James said that you _need_ to sleep.”

She saw Violet’s expression growing concerned, so she answered, “I’ll be able to sleep if I go out for a while. And I will come back, don’t sweat it.”

“Are you sure? You just got back from—”

“Vi, I’m fine. Don’t worry. I need to go out.”

* * *

She had gone through the music room before, briefly. There were piles of books, some too torn, against the walls; but what immediately drew her eyes was the grand piano at the corner. She didn’t enter the first time, but it didn’t stop her from being mesmerized by it. They had seen musical instruments on the road, in some houses that they looked into, and Clementine hadn’t hesitated to explain AJ all the beauty that the old world was able to carry. And while she never learnt to play an instrument, she could still come up with melodies and lyrics, broken and patched from years collecting dust in the corners of her mind.

Violet used the candle she carried to light up some across the room. In some places, the wax had long melted onto the furniture.

“Why did you wanna come here?” Clementine asked. She left the crutches against the armrest of the couch and sat.

Violet followed, settling on the other end, one leg up. “To think. I needed the silence,” she answered. “I used to go to another place before, when everything felt crowded. But now that… my friends aren’t here, anywhere is empty enough.” She let her head fall back and released a calm sigh. For the second time, Clem saw the beginning of the scar poking from the bandages. “I just need to be alone sometimes. But it’s nice. Being with you, I mean.”

She avoided her eyes as she said the last part, but the smile Clementine knew was for her. She found only truth, which ignited a small spot on her chest.

Her smiles were similar to James’. They weren’t loud, to delight everyone, but if you really payed attention, they really didn’t need to be. Yet in the same way, they were different. While James’ left a relaxing sensation, Violet’s turned her stomach. It was like seeing something that she wasn’t supposed to. But she wanted to. And Violet didn’t look opposed to showing her.

She had seen her smile and laugh before. Why couldn’t she pry her eyes off of her now?

“You’re nice too.”

It felt strangely weird, saying those words, but it was the most honest thing she said all night. It had been a while since she found people who she could talk to. She didn’t place much trust into groups formed solely by adults; her experiences hadn’t been pleasant, nor long. The last person her age that she met was Gabe, and that was how long ago? Three years? He was nice, but way too childish. She hadn’t hit it off with nobody as well as she did with Violet and James. She wondered what would it be like to meet the other kids.

Violet kept her smile. “Thanks. I’m sorry if I was rude at the start. I’m not exactly a… people person, you know?”

“I thought you were cool. AJ likes you too.”

“I’m glad. I don’t wanna be on his bad side.”

They feel on a comfortable silence. Violet took out her sketchbook—the cleaner one, not ringed—and Clementine threw her head back and closed her eyes at the sound of the pen brushing on paper. Her ribs hurt when she tried to take deep breaths, so she tried to not relax too much. At one point her leg started to ache, so she scooted closer to Violet to stretch her leg to the other end. Never too close, but Violet didn’t seem to mind, not even covering the book like she used to.

She was outlining a puma, in a fairly grim style. Its claws were stretched towards a black bird in mid-fly while the bird’s feet were angled as if it was trying to get the puma off. There was no color, but Clementine could see the aggressiveness as if it were all painted red.

She leaned her head on the back of the couch, the movement making her a little dizzy. She was tired, but didn’t want to sleep yet, so she kept her eyes open. They ended up on the piano again. It was hard to miss.

“Did someone play piano?” she asked after a while. Her voice was low, but Violet was close enough to hear it clearly.

And Clementine was close enough to feel her breathing hitch.

“Louis.”

“You’ve mentioned him before. Who was him?”

A pause.

“A fucking idiot.” There was no poison in her tongue. Quite the opposite. Her jaw was clenched and her eye closed a little bit too forceful, like a person who was trying not to cry.

“Don’t wanna talk about it?” Clem asked, but Violet regained her composure.

She just shrugged and shook her head, indifferent. The sketchbook now left on her lap. “I don’t mind, really. He’s not dead.” She still took a painful breath in, the kind that Clementine knew. “He was always on the fucking piano, if not cracking jokes and trying to get us to play cards. Always smiling, careless like he could walk past a walker and not get bitten. Pretty obnoxious. Too loud. Overall annoying. He was also my best friend.” She smiled to herself, and Clem instinctively returned an empathizing look. “You’d like him.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting him, then.”

Her expression hardened slightly. “I need to find them first.”

“Well, we have Delta’s location now.”

“And half a plan,” she added. “All thanks to you.” Before Clementine could have a chance to refute, she continued. “I didn’t want to talk about this tonight, but I didn’t have the chance to… say anything to you. To thank you for what you did.”

“You don’t have to. You and James saved my life,” Clementine said, but Violet shook her head.

“You can’t compare that.” She ran her hand through her face, her fingers stopping to press the bridge of her nose. “I thought that you only got lost, I _hoped_ so, because I couldn’t believe that a walker could have taken you down. But the wait became longer. I don’t know how much time passed before I heard you in the woods. I just saw you fall. You were shaking, with blood and dirt all over you, and the first thing you said was where the Delta is. As if you didn’t know that we were worried sick that you were… you know.” Her voice didn’t break, but it started to get weaker by the end. She wasn’t looking at her in the eyes, only at the floor. “I’m just glad. That you’re alive. I don’t know what I would do if… something else had happened to you.”

Hours ago, in the walk back home, Clementine had felt angry. She had found all that information about Delta, risked her life without batting an eye for even the _possibility_ of getting something, only to be dismissed in the way she had? But then the voice reappeared in her head, one that she didn’t expect to grow accustomed to, assuring her that she was _okay _in a way that managed to convince her. In that place she had realized that, seeing Clem out of breath, panicked and a mess on the ground, it wasn’t that Violet didn’t care about her advances, but rather that she hadn’t hesitated to lower them in priority. Anger had been just the culmination of the milliard of emotions she felt in a such a short time altogether, only to mask what the realization that Violet cared for her more than for her discovering _really_ made her feel. She had almost collapsed again.

“I’m okay now,” she said simply, a useless reiteration.

“Are you?” She knew that it was only out of concern, but the question felt like a bullet. “Clementine, what happened at the camp?”

Now it was her turn to look away. “I already told you.”

“You were rambling. I could barely wrap my head around what you were saying, but… I know that you killed someone,” she said, and somehow it hit worse than remembering it herself, “but it doesn’t _matter_. Not now. Not tomorrow. I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but the last thing I want is for it to eat you up.”

She let the seconds consume her for an instant. When she stopped rubbing her eyes with her palms, Violet was still looking at her expectantly. Not like she was trying to see past everything she knew, but patient. Soft.

So she told her. She told her about the people, stealing the backpack, and following the boy. About throwing him on the ground and the interrogation. How he grasped his neck. How his eyes looked at her. Everything before being found. And Violet listened, like nobody had in ages.

“It had been a while, you know?” Clementine continued. She didn’t know how she managed not to cry. She tried to rely on deep breaths and lowering her voice. “Since I… Since something made me, I don’t know, feel like this? There used to be a time where I didn’t care. About me, about other people. That wasn’t a nice time. I swore to never be like that again, but then today happened.”

Her legs were cramping, so she switched positions with them back to the floor, but still close to Violet. When her left touched the ground, she recoiled; it started to burn again. Part of the process.

“I can’t tell you not to feel bad about it,” Violet started, after a few seconds of processing. Clementine saw the surprise on her face when she was talking, but it didn’t go further than a rise of eyebrows. “I can’t do anything to make you stop feeling that way, as much as I would like to,but I can assure you that you’re far from a bad person.”

Clementine almost laughed. “You barely know me.”

“Then let me. I wouldn’t mind getting to know you better just to give you the same answer.” There was a light expression on her face, trying to be comforting. It started to work. “Maybe years ago, or in another place, another situation, I would have the right to tell you that what you did was horrible. But everyone is potentially dangerous now, being cautious is not a crime.”

“I shot him.”

“Because he was charging towards you,” Violet responded just as fast. “For all you knew, you were about to be stabbed.”

“And I could have reacted a hundred other ways, but I shot him. Being in danger doesn’t excuse me of something like that.”

“Maybe it doesn’t, but if you’re too concerned about not considering another people’s humanity, then start by recognizing yours. You… fucked up, and that guy is not coming back. But… was there a ‘good’ way to do things anyway?” she said. “We don’t know what’s right, or wrong, and the bars lowered a long time ago. I don’t think we ever really _did_. But maybe feeling bad is not always bad. I don’t know about you but I think it’s not bad to regret killing someone.”

Oh, how could she tell Violet that it wasn’t his death what frightened her, but that she felt like she was going to lose herself again? How do you start explaining the extent of your selfishness?

With her hands on her face, Clementine took a deep breath. Despite everything, Violet had a point. She was mad at herself, and possibly will keep being for weeks, but it would pass like everything does. It was relaxing to hear it from her, in a way. The comforting voice that convinced her that she wasn’t just grasping any nonsense she found in order to feel sane. At least for tonight.

She exhaled, and just leaned her head on Violet’s shoulder. The girl immediately tensed, but when Clementine was about to apologize and go back, she slid her arm across her shoulders and just _lightly_ pressed her in a side hug. Hesitating, as if Clementine hadn’t initiated it in a bold move. It almost made her laugh again. When was the last time she felt safe enough with someone this way?

Leaning on her shoulder almost gave her a completely new perspective of the room. Violet smelled less like the soap in the bathroom and more like wood and ashes from the fireplace. Clean. The hair that dangled over her shoulders tickled Clementine’s cheek. Violet’s back dropped against the back of the couch, her shoulders gradually relaxing. Everything was lighter.

“Did you tell AJ?” Violet asked. Her usual tone wasn’t exceptionally low nor too high, but the need to preserve the silence seemed to evoke a husky voice that Clem hadn’t heard before.

“No.”

“Do you think that you’ll have to?”

“I don’t think I ever will, if I’m being honest,” she answered, also in a quiet voice. “I’ve already done too much that he knows of. I don’t even want to know what his parents would think of me.”

That seemed to spark curiosity in Violet. “His parents?”

“Rebecca and Alvin,” she said, and a teasing smile took over her face. “What? Did you think that I had him?”

“No! I mean—” Clementine laughed inwardly and Violet pushed her shoulder in a playful way. “I didn’t want to _assume_ anything. I was meaning to ask but it just… didn’t happen? I didn’t want to think the worst. You’re young.”

She grimaced at the mere thought. “I understand. I would have questions too,” she said. “His parents were good people, for the most part.”

“AJ is a good kid.”

Clementine smiled. “For the most part.”

“What happened to them?”

“I met their group after losing my first one. When I was eleven, I think. Rebecca got sick after childbirth and turned. Alvin died the day before, got shot when we tried to escape a sick community that was keeping us prisoners. I just got tagged along after like a week of being with them.”

“A _week_? And you were _eleven_?”

“It gets worse,” Clem said with a humorless laugh. “It was never good to begin with.”

“You said… that it was after losing your first group?”

“Yeah.” She took a pause. She didn’t want to go into detail, not now. “Some of them got lost, most died. Then, in the second one… everyone died.” Still in Violet’s shoulder, she swallowed forcefully and her arms moved to hug herself. It didn’t hurt to think about them; she failed to convince herself that it wouldn’t hurt to _talk_ about them too. “I don’t really want to… you know.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to,” Violet said.

“Every group I’ve ever been with has died, and I’m the only one alive left to tell the tale. It’s always the same.”

She could feel the worrying look, but whatever pitying words Violet was going to say, she kept them to herself. They were replaced by a dry laugh. “Everyone either dies or leaves. I get it. You don’t need to tell me anything else.”

With another squeeze on her shoulder, Clementine fell on the embrace again. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on it, but the pain on her leg had gotten prominent this past minutes and the painkillers were on the drawer. If it weren’t for that, she was sure that she could fall asleep with Violet’s arm wrapped around her like that. She was a comforting presence. It was nice receiving the same sense of safety that she was so used to give.

For a while, she realized, it was all she needed.

“Don’t fall asleep on me now,” Violet said, keeping the low voice. Clementine smiled.

“Your fault you’re comfortable.”

Violet chuckled and straightened her back, taking her arm from Clementine’s shoulder with it. She followed the touch without noticing it until it disappeared.

“I didn’t meant for the conversation to turn into such dark shit. I wanted to ask you about the greenhouse, if I’m being honest.”

Clem’s expression shot up, and she arched an eyebrow, curious at the topic.

“It’s okay. Actually, I was wondering if you had any books about gardening—”

She was suddenly cut off when, trying to sit better upright, her whole body felt like it was falling backwards. Her world was stirring around her head, and the lightness she felt a couple of seconds ago vanished like trees in a fire.

“Shit—Clem! Are you okay?” Violet caught her from the shoulders before she could fall, lying her back down on the couch.

She groaned. “I… I don’t know. I just tried to move.”

She felt a hand on her face, but she kept her eyes closed.

“Clem, you’re burning. How in the fuck—” Violet cut herself off. “Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling bad? When did it start?”

“I don’t _know. _I though it was fine. It felt similar to when…” A wave of realization closed her mouth. “My leg.”

It was _burning_.

Violet looked like she understood.

“We need to get you to your room. Can you walk?” Clementine only nodded.

Sitting on the couch, she hadn’t realized how everything was actually feeling heavier. Violet slipped her arm around her and tried her best to hurry. Clem wouldn’t have been able to do that in crutches. She closed her eyes at a moment, knowing that just seeing everything as if it were running around her head was just going to get her worse, so she just let herself be guided by Violet. Her teeth clenched, yet she couldn’t suppress the occasional grunt of pain. Everything was such a blur even in her head that, when she found herself in her room, she wondered if she hadn’t fallen asleep rushing through the halls.

She threw herself back on the bed, moving her arm to cover her eyes. She didn’t notice AJ until Violet called him to go look for James, and the barks of Rosie before Violet shushed her down sounded as if she were ten feet underwater. She exhaled. Not nausea yet, but everything was moving fast enough to make her feel like it. She heard things moving around and a quiet “shit, shit, shit”.

“You still have some water left?” Clem nodded.

A chair moved closer to the bed. She barely groaned when Violet lifted her pant leg, then the bandages. She took her arm from her eyes and propped her torso with her elbows.

“It’s bad.”

She didn’t need to say it.

How did it change that much in such a short time? The cut was a mess of reds and purples, and she was only glad to not see much greens. Someone might as well lit her leg on fire, and honestly she wouldn’t be able to tell the pain apart. There were only a few things more repulsive than the pus and dead skin of an infection; she didn’t want to know the other ones.

It was bad. She knew it was bad. But she appreciated Violet barely flinching.

“I— It doesn’t look like a… _deadly_ infection, at least. You won’t get sepsis. I hope.” Violet managed to say. She dipped the rag once in water and wrung it out. “James needs to fucking get here, he knows more about this shit.”

Without taking her eyes off the mess of skin, Clementine cleared her throat. “I know it’s a far fetch but do you have any sugar? Honey, even?”

Violet looked confused, but nodded nonetheless. “I think we have some. I’ll be right back.”

The couple of minutes she lay alone in her own pain went as fast as a decade. She was sinking on the mattress, melting, and for a genuine instant she wished for someone to just rip her whole leg off. James and AJ got through the door before that thought could get too far.

“It looks… bad,” AJ said, hastening to her side. Clem had to resist the urge to let out a dry laugh.

“I think I _might _know, goofball.”

He didn’t reply, just grabbed her hand.

“I was hoping this wouldn’t happen,” said James, calm. It should have worked but Clementine didn’t feel like calm at that situation.

He opened a flask and got one of the pills from the drawer. She gladly took it.

Violet stormed into the room holding a bag the size of a fist.

“Found some in the reserves of the dinning room.”

“Thank god.”

She knew that she was going to pass out the moment her head touched the pillow once again. She needed to be fast.

“Clean. Then put the sugar and bandage it up.”

“It’s going to hurt.”

She almost laughed again at James. “I know.”

The last thing she heard was the bag opening as droplets of cold water fell over her skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes i forget which eye i maimed on vi.  
bitch INFECTED her wound in the apocalypse without ANTIBIOTICS and i refuse to let her suffering stop. more in a month


End file.
